If a gun appears, it usually goes off, but rarely in a cool way. Sometimes a horse shows up, but it usually dies in a ditch along with the people. This is literature, and as such you never find a spy or a submarine. Some of them contain information, but it exists in very subtle form, so you really have to parse it carefully. If I turn pages, it’s often because I’m bored or because the monologue has just gotten too long and I want to get on with it already. The Booker novels are rarely entertaining. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper. It was kind of a wash, so I don’t count that book. The Mirror And The Light, by Hillary Mantel, was reliably fine, but I’d already seen the BBC series. I got through three-quarters of it, and enjoyed less than one quarter of the books I read. Last year, I took on the task of reading as much of the Booker longlist as I could. Then Booker Prize season arrives, and I torture myself. Other subsidiary reasons arise–relaxation, aesthetic pleasure, to enjoy a well-constructed sentence, to fuel professional envy–but those are the main two. I generally read for one of two purposes, for entertainment or information.
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