The Book I've Yet To Finish
The producer of our new Book Cafe programme, Victoria McArthur, called to ask if there was a particular book I've have trouble finishing. I mentally scanned the volumes on my home bookshelf and remembered that dog-eared paperback edition of Ulysses. It seems, according to a survey that's all over today's newspapers, that I'm not alone in selecting that James Joyce tome.
Yet here's a thing: why don't I just chuck it? Why have I ferried that book from house to house since I was about sixteen years old? Why do I let it sit on the shelf haunting me, taunting me and making me feel guilty?
It's time to deal with it. I'm going to sort through those books and take a pile of them to the Oxfam shop in Inverness.
Mind you, it's not just James Joyce I have trouble with. For many years I've been drawn to novels of Stephen King. I probably buy one every year, just to take with me on holiday. His stories usually involve some kind of demonic possession of, say, a car, a dog, a shop, a house, a lawnmower... The story-telling is such that I'm usually drawn in to the first five or six chapters but somehow, somewhere along the way, I lose all interest in the characters and couldn't care less if they end up spending an enternity in the service of Satan.
I mean, I used to work for commercial radio and nothing else ever seems quite so awful.
Hmmm...a demonically possessed radio station....now there's an idea!
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