So I was having a good old think for 5 minutes about what I like in the book department. I do like reading. Generally, I'll give anything a go as long as it's got words in it. That includes take-away menus and papers with pictures of nominally-clad ladies in.
I'm currently working through Richard Dawkins 'Climbing Mount Improbable', which is an enjoyable tuition on the evolutionary pressures species face which force them to develop such amazing adaptations such as eyes and wings. Next on my shelf is a book discussing modern concepts of physics, including quantum theory and relativity, which I'm sort of expecting to be a little like putting caviar in a marshmallow. The good stuff will go in but it won't do anything, and will be a bugger to get out again.
Prior to that, I read the second in Peter F. Hamiltons enormous Void trilogy, 'The Temporal Void', which despite being 800-odd pages long, flashes by like a particulalry good soap opera. Only in space. With all aliens and spaceships and that. A lot of people seem to frown on science fiction, particularly my more literate friends, who think of it as not much more than a graphic novel and not something that will tax the intellect any. I don't find this, as it makes me use my brain whilst providing enjoyable escapism, which is what fiction reading is all about isn't it?
I enjoy outdoorsy things like survival manuals and wildlife guides, and take my "Food for Free" book out with me whenever I'm camping, although I note the irony as I flick idly through the pages on edible bullrushes whilst enjoying a steak and kidney pie in a pub.
Other stuff? Biographies are hit and miss with me. Some celeb ones are good, written at the end of a fulfilling career in sports or entertainment, but it's just odd when they're about 18 year-olds who's life story consists of getting born, developing acne, going on X-factor and then becoming famous.
Those Tell-All books about horribly abusive childhoods with titles like 'Daddy, NO!" and "The Vicar's Sin" just make me squirm. Jane Austen just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest as I can't seem to find any sympathy for aristocratic sex-starved heroines who are down to their last house and five servants and deemed to be down on their luck. Biting social commentary or not, it just doesn't get me going.
Newspapers seem to be getting more and more fictional all the time, as less journalists strive to write more column inches, which means I never buy them anymore.
At school, I liked Lord of the Flies but not A Kestrel for a Knave. Military romps are okay but, as I'm reading a breakdown of the intrinsic parts of an L115A3 long-range rifle, I'm acutely aware that the author is pandering to my masculinity by describing the intrinsic parts of an L115A3 long-range rifle.
So, what does that lot say? I think my tastes are pretty standard fare for the modern unreconstructed male really, and don't reveal too much of my inner psyche.
Whilst in my GPs waiting room a few weeks ago though, I couldn't help but notice the title of this childrens book, and the fact that I thought it inappropriate suggests I'm reading far too many blogs which are warping my mind lately:
Now that probably does say something about my inner workings, but I realy don't want to know what.
