I NORMALLY HAVE SEVERAL BOOKS GOING at the same time - I try to have fiction and non-fiction by my bedside all the time, and I also tend to have other books scattered around, at work and home, to be picked up now and then.  Although I don't often sit and read for several hours at a time as I used to, I am still a fast reader and reckon to read around 100 pages an hour, so a lot of books can be finished off in an evening.

The current reading list is as follows:

  • The Far Side of the World, by Patrick O'Brian
    It took several year of friends' recommendations to get around to reading the first of O'Brian's novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, but I am now working my way through the entire 20-book sequence.  This is volume 10, and the quality of the writing is still amazingly good - charactterisation, plot, description and narative are all excellent, and I'd recommend them to anyone.  Genre writing at its best.

  • The Assassin's Cloak
    An anthology of diarists; not my normal choice, but a gift which I am appreciating more and more as I get into it.  It is organised chronologically, with serval different entries for each date, so I am reading it over a year.

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