There can never be too many books

And so it is that World Book Day is upon us again – and almost gone, at the time of writing.

In an era where, increasingly, digital seems to dominate, it’s wonderful to think about books.

Yes, yes: I know that books can be digital too, but, to me – and many millions more – there is nothing to beat the tactile joy of a real book. Indeed, for billions of people on this planet, the old-fashioned variety of bound paper is all that they can hope to have access to.

Do you remember the joy when, as a child, you managed to read a book on your own for the first time?

I cannot remember the title of the first book I managed like that, but I remember sitting in a small red and white straw child’s basket chair with it, and being so proud when I got to the last page.

Not that long after, I took enormous pleasure in Enid Blyton’s Well Really, Mr Twiddle, which had me hooting with hysterical laughter.

Many years later, I got pretty much the same sense of pride from reading an entire Asterix book in German. Books always offer potential for new moments of personal achievement.

At the beginning of my twenties, I suffered some sort of breakdown after being injured and then chucked out of polytechnic. For ages, I couldn’t read – even much-loved books could not hold my concentration beyond the first few pages.

What revived reading for me was Stephen King. I picked up Carrie in a local bookshop and couldn’t it down. Then The Stand and It, with many more to follow.

I ‘discovered’ Terry Pratchett before he was anywhere near national treasure status, standing in a small sci-fi and fantasy bookshop to meet him once when nobody else was even around.

The result is three very precious signed volumes of the earliest Discworld novels.

Books – among the very first things I’d unpack in my nomadic early adulthood: get those out and it would start to feel like home.

Books, which provide a wonderful pre-holiday ritual when considering what from my buckling shelves I wish to take.

Books, which bring with them knowledge and entertainment.

While the majority of the books that I have bought in recent years have been non-fiction, I still seek out good storytelling too.

Penguin are now releasing the entire Maigret collection, and with new translations that finally do Simenon’s noir novels justice. Those are on pre-order with me.

There are old friends that I have read many times already and will probably read many times more: Jan Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (which I hated at school), Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Stephen King’s The Shining (the movie was crap) and Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, all of which I find new things in every time I pick them up.

I have a few antiquarian (relish that word) books – some up to 200 years old. They are to be treasured and looked after: I feel only a temporary guardian.

And I also rather pride myself on having a collection of books about German history – no! Not that period! – that would, I suspect, count as pretty decent.

I still judge a bookshop on its history section: on whether it is just full of WWII and the Nazis or goes beyond that.

Of course, talking of the Nazis, it’s always worth remembering how they burnt books on Bebelplatz in Berlin in 1933 – right next to the Humboldt University. That symbolism should tell you something about the power of the written word. And today, of course, we have groups of religious fundamentalists who want to deny people – and women and girls in particular – the right to learn.

Whether in the deepest, darkest days or winter, curled up on the sofa with a good read and a hot chocolate or under a parasol on the beach in the height of summer, is there really anything that can compare to the pleasure that can be found in the pages of a good book?

So let’s celebrate books today – and those who create them and those who read them – but let’s never stop loving books for all the other days of the year.

And PS: make sure you love your local library too.

Literature and an outburst of modern hysteria

I'm faint with the shock of it all

In the middle of all the news, analysis and hand-wringing surrounding the European and local elections emerged a little story that came almost as light relief.

Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird are to be barred from school reading lists by secretary of state for education Michael Gove, it was reported late last week.

I don’t know about the reaction of any mockingbirds, but Twitter was alive with the sound of indignant tweeting.

One could quite easily have reached the conclusion that, deprived of the opportunity to read these works by John Steinbeck and Harper Lee, The Young People will fail in their studies, be put off reading for life and probably start injecting H.

Okay: I invented the last one.

The BBC reported “a Labour spokesperson” as howling that Gove’s “vision is backward-looking and preventing the rich, broad and balanced curriculum we need in our schools if our children are to succeed in the future economy.

Now it’s a lovely idea that what every child studies for a GCSE in English literature will have a direct impact on the national economy, but I’m going to call that one out as bollocks.

Actually, the reports were illustrative of the parlous state of substantial chunks of the UK media, as various organs picked up the story and ran with it uncritically.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, irrespective of Gove’s involvement in anything, some of the attitudes that have been revealed are hysterical – in more ways than one.

There is not a shred of evidence that any book has been banned.

One exam board has chosen to drop the novels from its preliminary syllabus (plus Arthur Miller’s The Crucible), with one anonymous individual from that board reportedly claiming that Gove’s personal dislike of Lee’s book is behind it – a claim that seems, at best, to be of dubious merit, although Gove has form on complaining that he thought ‘too many’ pupils were studying it. But that is not a synonym for hating the book himself.

The new English literature GCSE subject content was published last December and includes at least one play by Bill the Bard, something by the Romantic poets, a 19th Century novel, poetry since 1850 and a 20th Century novel or drama.

So pupils will still be able to study modern British works – the BBC reported that Meera Syal’s 1996 story of a British Punjabi girl in the Midlands, Anita and Me, and Dennis Kelly’s 2007 play about bullying, DNA, are among recent works that have been included in the same exam board’s draft syllabus.

Yet the Sunday Times reported Bethan Marshall, “a senior lecturer in English at King’s College, London”, as saying that it was a syllabus “straight out of the 1940s”, which would make schools “incredibly depressed” when they see it.

This is hyperbolic rubbish.

Frankenstein's monster. 19th Century. Still iconic

My secondary education came more than a generation later than the end of the 1940s and that’s pretty much what we studied for English literature – for our exam at 16.

Indeed, this is another point that seems to have passed over the heads of some.

This is about what pupils study for a particular GSCE – not for every English literature class for the duration of their secondary education up to and including taking that exam.

If Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird are so influential and important to the development of young people, then perhaps they should be taught in the first three years, as preparation for the eventual list of texts that are available to be studied for examination?

To go back to my own experience, in the five years up to O’ level, we studied a huge number of books – and at least two plays a year by Shakespeare (plus the odd one by Sheridan and Shaw).

Now, much as I like to highlight my own uniqueness, I rather doubt that I’m alone in observing, some decades later, that none of that old stuff wrecked my exam chances or put me off reading.

In some cases, I fell in love instantly with the works – in particular, all but one of the Shakespeare that we studied (I only disliked Romeo and Juliet) and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

At the time, I disliked Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brönte and most certainly bloody, sodding Keats.

But then I also disliked William Golding’s Lord of the Flies – every bit a 20th Century novel – while I enjoyed Orwell’s Animal Farm.

As it happens, I have returned to most of these in the years since walking out of school for the last time. In most cases, I have enjoyed what I didn’t at the time and have explored further.

And my more recent literary peregrinations did not begin in isolation, but started as a result of my return to the literature I first encountered in class.

Ode to Autumn aside, however, Keats remains “bloody, sodding Keats”. Thankfully, our teacher also introduced us to a spot of Ted Hughes. And yes, I still read poetry too.

For clarity, I came from a home that was filled with books (mostly theology, non-fiction and light fiction), but have no memories of ever being read to or, once I’d passed beyond reading obviously children’s stories, being encouraged to read anything more demanding than Mary Stewart or Agatha Christie.

Vampires are still popular

So it was a case of mixed messages on the home front, leaving my introduction to literature entirely down to school (as was my introduction to art and music).

My first secondary school, which I attended until after taking my O’ levels, had a very mixed intake in terms of social background. It was a girls’ grammar school (we still had the 11 plus), but it was most certainly not ‘posh’.

My sister, who went to a local secondary school, was introduced to those dreadful ‘old’ books too – and has never ceased to be a reader or to love many older classics.

One of the problems with this sort of debate is that it is inherently patronising to children and young people.

It assumes that they need ‘easy’ texts and that ‘difficult’ – for which, often read ‘old’ – ones will be too hard and will turn them off their studies and even off reading in general.

Such things as computers, television and gaming are cited as being among the reasons that pupils will struggle to concentrate on anything that isn’t obviously ‘accessible’.

As I said: patronising.

Some complaints seem to think that not studying two particular classic 20th Century US texts for an exam will mean that pupils will be deprived – in other words, that they will never read them.

That is an assumption. There is nothing to stop anyone reading those – and other – books, either in their childhood or later. As I suggested earlier, there is nothing to stop a school using those books in earlier literature classes, before GCSE course work begins.

It also falls into the trap of assuming that the prime role of teaching literature to children is to create a life-long love of reading.

Now while hardly unpleasant, that’s far too simplistic an idea.

Few would apply the same idea to, say, the teaching of maths or of geography, so why treat reading differently?

Mind, much of this comes from the same camps that denounce ‘grammar nazis’ and proclaim that children should not be expected to learn to write correctly.

What they do in this – quite apart from revealing an utter lack of understanding of what a ‘nazi’ really was/is – is to reveal, among other things, that they do not comprehend the connection between a solid grammatical grounding in one’s own language properly and the ability to learn another language.

Let’s make it harder for children, shall we?

Every child – not just the ones whose parents can afford to send them to private schools – every child should have the right to the very best possible language education, in order that they have the very best chance to learn to make the most of the English language.

The clash between science and nature is no longer topical

That will not just help them in their future lives, but can be claimed to make a difference to the economic life of the nation as a whole.

And every child – not just the ones whose parents can afford to send them to private schools – every child should have the right to be introduced to the literary heritage of this country (and even Classical culture) and not just the ‘easy’ bits.

It’s the same, incidentally, with music and art – every child should have the right to be introduced to the very best that has been reached in those realms and not just what might be considered ‘easy’.

It’s not the role of education to make things comfortably easy, but to challenge the mind in order for that to develop.  Literature isn’t just about sitting down for a nice bit of a read, but about helping to develop critical skills.

To go down the route of education being ‘easy’ in such a way is not far from seeing education as essentially utilitarian – as merely a preparation for the workplace, which is what you get when the likes of the CBI bleats that school leavers lack “business and customer awareness” skills.

The idea has also been doing the rounds that pre-20th Century literature is also inherently reactionary – ‘misogynist’, was how one Twitter user characterised most of it.

First, as with reading history, it’s a cardinal error to attempt to impose modern mores on the past. You should not, as the Open University beautifully explains it, try to understand the Roman Colosseum through the prism of 21st Century Western attitudes to crime and punishment, religion or even animal rights (as though there’s only one Western attitude to any of those subjects anyway).

Similarly, you don’t try to understand any cultural ‘artifact’ by doing the same thing.

But none of this means that you have to introduce children to classic literature in a way that’s turgid.

Stop being terrified of the bawdiness of Chaucer.

And Shakespeare is full of power and politics, sex and violence.

Examine The Merchant of Venice in terms of anti-semitism and racism – and a proper examination, including the context in which it was written, does not produce the tired argument that is an inherently bigoted play, but rather, subtly the opposite.

Modern enough?

Look at Dickens for insights into 19th Century social issues. Austen was, first and foremost, a satirist – not a writer of rom-coms.

Read Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton if you want to see a representation of women and of class in the 19th Century industrial north.

Just want a damned good yarn? Try Conan Doyle or HG Wells – and with the latter, consider his ideas in terms of 21st Century scientific developments such as GM or cloning.

Now there’s a thought: man tampering with nature. What about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The fear of female sexuality and modernity? Try Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Indeed, many of the above remain iconic figures on both the printed page and in film. With the latter, there comes the suggested opportunity to discuss changing attitudes toward women – and if you wanted, you could explore that by comparing Stoker’s tale with modern incarnations of vampires, including Selene in the Underworld film series.

19th Century English literature should not be seen as some sort of holy canon, but neither should it be damned and ignored, any more than anything from later – or earlier – or treated as though it were somehow so utterly out of date that is has no connection to human lives and experience in the 21st century.

Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with children reading To Kill a Mockingbird or Of Mice and Men, (I loved being introduced to Arthur Miller at A’ level), but I have no problem with them being introduced to older texts either.

The idea that seems to be floating around that somehow they’ll be damaged if they cannot study for examination the former novels, and damaged if they have to study for examination anything from before 1900, is patronising nonsense that does absolutely nothing to promote the best possible educational opportunities for every child.

And in protestations about ‘old’ literature and ‘accessibility’, the argument perversely turns out to be similar to Rupert Murdoch’s avowed anti-elitism. Do we need to detail how that has been used as an excuse to dumb down media – including but not limited to news media – and its impact on the UK’s public discourse?

If you need a reminder, then consider current attempts by the Times – once the paper of record – to smear Labour leader Ed Miliband because he looks a bit “weird”.

Another point: the clue is in the title – English literature. If you want to create a different course that covers global literature, then do so.

Literature in translation doesn’t count – although students of foreign languages will likely read relevant literature during their courses – so why should literature from the US?

After all, does anyone whine about a perceived lack of opportunity for pupils studying English literature to read, say, works by the rather excellent Australian author, Peter Carey?

And for brooding romance, Jane Eyre

Setting all that aside, is social mobility helped or increased by making education ‘easy’.

Ask yourself where the political leaders from the traditional working class are these days.

Is their absence down, in part, to the demise of the grammar schools that provided opportunities to gain the tools that enabled social mobility – including those that would and will always be available to those who have the fortune to be born to wealthy families.

Now this is not an argument that grammar schools are, per se, the ‘answer’. But the current situation is quite clearly not working – see that question about our politicians, and plenty of research that reveals social mobility to be reducing.

There are myriad reasons to criticise and damn Gove – his obsessive love of free schools and his actual record of trying to micromanage the curriculum (including some of his pronouncements on the teaching of history) are just two – but this non-issue really has the hallmarks of a dose of 19th century hysteria.

And caught in the middle, as always, are young people, being used – yet again – as a convenient political and ideological football.

So go on – won’t somebody actually think of the children for a change?

Any chance we could talk sensibly about this?

Like a chill autumn breeze that sends you scuttling away for a cardigan, there has been a blast of puritan shrillness in the air in the past week.

And it’s enough to send a shiver down the spine of any sane individual.

First, the press has been full of both the conviction of a gang of men for the rape, abuse, pimping and drugging of girls in Rochdale.

Then there has been the case of Megan Stammers, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, who ran away with her besotted 30-year-old maths teacher and was eventually found in France.

And now, just as interest in these stories is waning, and with perfect timing, come accusations of rape and abuse against the late Jimmy Savile.

In the Rochdale case, the main cause of consternation doesn’t seem to have been the victims – who, by and large, appear to have been ‘troubled’ and rather ‘lumpen’ – but the ethnicity and religion of the convicted men.

Is there a particular issue with some men of a certain origin (parts of Asia) and religion (Islam) believing that white girls are useable because they are inferior?

At least one leader from within that community has said that it is an issue and needs to be rooted out and dealt with. Assorted commentators claim otherwise.

It is entirely possible that such a cultural problem does exist with some people: we have no problem admitting that cultural issues such as ‘honour’ killings and female genital mutilation exist and should not be ignored because of some idea of cultural ‘sensitivity’. This should be no different.

But it is also a red herring in terms of abuse as a whole. It can hardly, for instance, be used to ‘explain’ the likes of Fred West or countless other abusers – and it’s doubtful that anyone is going to claim that they were abusers because they were white or had dark hair or had a peculiarly Christian take on sin and sex and females.

But the point remains that it is the abusers who have been at the heart of the coverage – not the victims themselves.

Yet look at the Megan Stammers case and you see something quite different.

Now admittedly, she is not particularly ‘lumpen’ or ‘troubled’, so perhaps she is easier to feel sympathy with.

But you really could be forgiven for imagining that Jeremy Forrest is in the same league as the Rochdale abuse gang, whereas his biggest crime is probably being a self-centred, self-indulgent, immature idiot with a total lack of any sense of his responsibility as a teacher or a husband.

Because there is no suggestion, at this stage, that Megan herself was an unwilling party to the flight and what may (or may not) have happened, or that there was any coercion involved.

Yet the shrillness has punctured any efforts to look at the case rationally.

Peter Tatchell has been vilified on social media for having the temerity to point out that, even if it is the correct legal term, there is no suggestion that Megan was “abducted” in terms of how most of us would use that word in the non-legal world.

In the meantime, I was ‘told off’ on Twitter for pointing out that this case was not one of paedophilia.

Paedophilia refers to an interest in or sexual contact with pre-pubescent children. This, fairly clearly, does not apply to Megan Stammers.

Apparently, to point this out is to say that what happened in this case was “ok”.

Actually, no. It wasn’t. It was to point out that the correct word is actually quite important. After all, there were two reasons that some people harassed a paediatrician from her home:

1) they were too thick to know that paediatrician and paedophile are not one and the same;

2) they were knee-jerking little vigilantes who thought that they had the right to take the law into their own hands.

Well, three, if you add into that unholy brew the toxic News of the World and the equally toxic Rebekah Brooks, with her campaign to ‘out’ child abusers, which also triggered the Paulsgrove Estate riots, as residents used The Great Paedo Paranoia as an excuse to exact retribution in all sorts of unrelated situations.

In terms of ‘abduction’, there is a very great deal of difference between this case and what happened to, for instance, Sarah Payne. To pretend that the two are the same would, frankly, be rather insulting.

So words really are quite important.

My Twitter twit disappeared in a huff. Apparently when one doesn’t like something, one has to use the strongest possible terms to illustrate this. Even when those terms are incorrect.

Otherwise, the lack of a loud enough objection can be construed as condoning the original situation.

Well, I’d suggest that, on the basis of what we know, there’s a massive difference between Megan’s case and, say, that of the girls in Rochdale who were abused, raped, pimped and drugged.

I’d suggest that there’s a massive difference between what happened in Megan’s case and the rape, say, of an infant.

That doesn’t mean that there is no case to answer for Forrest: Megan was under age and he abused a position of trust.

That does not suddenly mean it’s the same as paedophilia.

It is interesting to note that, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the characters Lydia and Wickham elope. She is 15 and he is 28 (two years younger than Forrest). They are found and marriage ensues.

And nobody accuses Austen of writing about – or condoning – paedophilia or child abuse or underage sex.

Goodness knows how Megan herself will fare now that she has, in effect, become public property by virtue of looming so large in the newstainment world’s output of the last week.

Perhaps the best she can hope for is that the media – and the section of the public that laps this sort of thing up – gets bored with her story and/or is diverted onto some new sensation.

But over at Conservative Home blogs, all this was causing family solicitor Martin Sewell to quiver with moral indignation as he announced that "the age of consent is worth defending".

He invoked Victoria Gillick – moral campaigner against contraception and mother of 10 children – and talked of his mate the priest, with whom he has few agreements – except on this issue.

Actually, the entire Gillick things is interesting, since her crusade against a girl under 16 being prescribed contraception without parental knowledge argued that nobody under 16 could consent to their own medical treatment.

It actually led to the House of Lords deciding that, in some circumstances, a young person could do exactly that – without parental interference.

Which, if that is the case, raises intriguing questions as to contraception and consent.

However, back to Sewell’s argument.

It’s crap.

Not least because we all know that the Netherlands has the lowest age of consent in the West – and also the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in the West.

For clarity, in the Netherlands, the age of consent amongst peers is 12, and then without such limits from 14.

In France, it’s 15. In Spain, 14. And so on.

In recent years, we have even seen a situation where a boy (but not the girl, obviously) of 15 was prosecuted and put on the sex offenders’ register for having consensual sex with his girlfriend of the same age.

Yes, Sewell: having one of the highest ages of consent in the West is working so well it’s “worth defending” because it’s so clearly, err, ‘working’.

The age of consent (which didn’t apply to Lydia Bennet) didn’t stop Forrest and Megan running off.

Abuse – whether paedophile in nature or not – occurs irrespective of an age of consent.

Yet we criminalise (on a sexist basis) people who should not be criminalised.

And we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe.

Research into the relationship between the age of consent and the age at which young people start to sexually experiment with others is hardly even in its infancy, so we don’t know yet why it seems that countries with a higher age of consent (the UK and US) have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy (and high rates of abortion and also STDs).

We do, however, seem to be horrified at the idea that children are not sexless, but are ‘innocent’ until they can no longer be ‘protected’ from some sexual corruption as late as possible in their adolescence.

So, for instance, infants do not play with their genitals.

Perhaps the key – in part at least – is in the shrill tone of the debate, and a culture where the UK has an unholy mix of extreme prurience and Puritanism, and sex is still viewed through a prism of religious concepts of sin and guilt.

A sense of the latter may help to explain why there seems to have been less concern about the victims in the Rochdale case than Megan: in being ‘troubled’ and ‘lumpen’, there is the suggestion of some element of blame on their part.

How ironic that such an attitude really is little removed from one that demands women dress ‘modestly’ in order not to tempt poor men who might otherwise leap on them, and that those who do not obey this rule are morally inferior.

In the meantime, allegations about the late Jimmy Savile have started flying, provoking comments on assorted websites that the women who say that they were abused/raped are only doing it after his death in order to make money.

Then, there’s the cult of ‘We’, as illustrated by blogger and Mirror columnist Fleet Street Fox, who suggests that we all ‘knew’ that the creepy Savile was an abuser, and are all, therefore, complicit.

It has more than a hint of religious guilt – and is as ungrounded in reality as the idea of original sin.

As it happens, I heard the allegations about Savile some 18 years ago – from a senior journalist at the Daily Mail, which is now using the whole business to try to smear the BBC, claiming a cover up.

Well, at least one Mail journalist ‘knew’ – and possibly more, so why didn’t that upstanding organ launch a campaign of investigative journalism to get at the truth?

Oddly enough, when I’ve attempted to ask this exact same question on the Mail’s website forums – twice in the last 24 hours – neither post has appeared.

Censorship at the Mail: who’d a thunk that?

It goes without saying – or it should – that I no more have proof that Savile being an abuser than almost anyone else has. My instincts may tell me that it’s true – and a number of things fit the pattern of abuse cases – but that does not automatically make it so.

It’s also worth noting that, when I heard, I had no more opportunity or resources to ‘do something’ about it than pretty much anyone else.

But the allegations keep coming and also apparently involve girls at an approved school that Savile visited – and at the Haut de la Garenne orphanage in Jersey, which was the subject of an investigation a few years ago.

Similarities with the Rochdale victims, perhaps?

If it is the case that any of these allegations are true, then the only really important thing will be that disclosure will allow any victims a sense of closure.

But in the meantime, why does it seem to be so difficult to have sensible discussions about such cases, without hyperbole and moral panic intervening?

By the book

On World Book Day, moving behond the simple - and obviously obvious - point that books are quite simply fabulous, it seems entirely apt to ask a number of literary questions.

The current 'big question' that seems to be exercising many in the literary world is less 'what are you reading?' and more 'what are you reading it on?' Or put another way: books v ebooks. Which is a sort of new religious war.

Now frankly, there are some downright daft – and pretentious – arguments doing the rounds in favour of both sides of this debate, but it seems to me that ultimately, the only one that is important is what you like yourself. In other words, it's entirely subjective.

Personally, I can do many things on a mobile device - writing this blog, for instance, or reading news on a wide variety of sites - but when I want to read a book, whether fiction or not, then I will read a book.

There is a pleasure in the physical aspect of a book. You hold it differently. It feels utterly different in your hands. That's not to say mobile devices are bad - they have their place.

The point is, there are arguments for both. And they're neither right nor wrong in simplistic terms.

But on this day, let's move away fom such diversions.

Books are a wonderful part of my life - as is literature (the two are not synonyms). As recently as 12 years ago, I considered Tolkien to be the greatest author ever and writer of the greatest ever novel(s), but fortunately, the last decade or so has seen me grow up. And realise - amongst other things - that Lord of the Rings is far from original. Far, far, far from it!

So here's a brief list to celebrate some of my favourite books - and hopefully inspire you to think about your favouring books too.

Favourite classic novel

I have to go for Pride and Prejudice, which I read approximately every two years - and always find something new in it.

I hate the chiclitification of it - this is a very clever satire, not a simplistic rom-com. Fab stuff - and too subtle of most people, it seems. Jane Austen still utterly rocks.

Favourite modern novel

The Tin Drum

There are quite a few contenders for this - more than one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but Günter Grass's debut novel was one of the first pieces of serious literature that I read, and it remains an astonishing work that lives high in my personal panteon - not least as an example of northern European magic realsm,, which people seem to be surprised exists.

Favourite short story/novella

Death in Venice

I have now lost track of how many times I have read Thomas Mann's apotheosis of western short fiction since I first discovered it, some 10 years ago.

It took me a month to read, that first time - I was so utterly stunned to discover that a book could have as many layers as an onion. I couldn't write anything myself for months thereafter. And then, like a damn bursting, thoughts and words burst forth: my working vocabulary seemed to grow expotentially.

There are reasons I rate Mann so very highly. And that's without even beginning to explore the ideas in a book that so many completely misread and/or misunderstand.

Favourite graphic novel

V for Vendetta

Alan Moore's graphic masterpiece was the first graphic novel I ever read. It was a shattering read and I've not seen it bettered.

Otherwise, Asterix. In English, German or even the original French.

Favourite piece of non-food non-fiction

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of Prussia

Christopher Clark's history of Prussia is a fabulous example of modern history writing. Quite simply superb.

Favourite piece of foodie non-fiction

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Anything by Elizabeth David is worth reading. But this collection is, in particular, an utter joy.

Favourite single volume of poetry

The Man With Night Sweats

Thom Gunn's collection left me stunned by its power when I read it in a single sitting. Extraordinary stuff.

Favourite childrens's book

Well Really, Mr Twiddle is possibly appalling, but it was the first non-picture book that I ever read, all on my own. And I sat in a little red and white whicker bucket chair and chuckled madly through the entire Enid Blyton affair.

Favourite piece of genre fiction

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler's masterpiece is, err, a masterpiece. Cynical poetry. Superb.

Favourite comic novel

Witches Abroad

Just on of Terry Pratchett's fantastic series of comedy fantasy satires. I could have picked any one of many others, but this gets the nod. It ranges from outright farce to heart-rending pathos.

I love PG Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe, but Pratchett has taken the English comic novel to new heights.

So, what about your own lists?

If this was a race, it would be a good start

It's been a beautiful start to the new year in London – bright blue skies and sunshine, and a crisp cold to invigorate.

I feel particularly relaxed – and that's helped by a celebratory dinner being well under way. I've got individual ramekins of potatoes boulangère in the oven – layers of thinly sliced potato and onion, seasoned with chopped flat leaf parsley, salt and pepper, with chicken stock poured to almost the rim, dotted with butter and covered with foil. The foil will come off in a short while and they'll get a further 30 minutes uncovered.

Shortly before that process is concluded, I'll pan fry rump steaks with crushed peppercorns pressed into the meat. Those will then be flambéd in brandy before cream is added to finish the sauce. I only set fire to a dish for the first time just over a year ago – terrified of fire since childhood, it was a big thing to do so. I wouldn't say I'm now casual about it – I still get the pan lid ready, shut the kitchen door and feel the adrenalin rise – but it's not out of my skill store now.

The steaks won't be cooked for long – two minutes a side. I won't buy cheap meat if I can help it – I'd rather have meat less often – and although I've increasingly become a real meat lover in recent years, I concomitantly see the meat, and how it was produced, with respect.

I want something really easy for the side, so that'll be tenderstem broccoli. Also in a short while, I'll open a bottle of Grenache to let it breathe. And there's just enough Banyuls to serve as an aperitif.

And for dessert, there's are crème brûlées chilling in the fridge, waiting just for a sprinkling of brown sugar and the caress of the blowtorch to caramelise it.

It's a perfect meal to start 2010.

I have made a few resolutions – but none of them involve food. Mostly, I use resolutions each year as private reminders of certain things that I need to be a little more disciplined about. So every year, for instance, I promise to read more. It's not so much a question of reading "more", though, but of making that pledge to myself to keep up my reading.

And talking of reading, I finished Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice the other day, for the ...

Well, I can't remember how many times I've read it. The first time was at school, where it was one of our set texts for 'O' level. I loved it then and have loved it ever since. And yet, like all really great books, there's something fresh that strikes you each time you pick it up again.

In this case, it was really noticing the inadequacies of Mr Bennet – effectively an absent father – and not just his wife.

But it also amazes me how many people seem to believe that Austen only wrote 19th century rom-coms – she hasn't, in that sense, been well served by dramatisations, which don't tend to show up the satire as clearly as the romantic elements of the plots. But the satire here is very clear on the page, and Austen's targets ranged from the obvious human flaws suggested by the title to class snobbery and on to the obsession of some females with fashion and men.

But she was also a sharp observer on questions such as the situation of women (of her own class). Here, for instance, Elizabeth's close friend Charlotte Lucas marries Mr Collins for no other reason than security. Elizabeth is shocked, but it's quite clear that Austen herself understood that such pragmatism was the only hope for many of her sex.

The humour is not soft: it has a bite that is delicious to this day.

On conclusion, I ordered Emma, which I've never read, and Persausion, which I haven't read since it was a text during my 'A' level studies.

And continuing the Victorian buzz, I've started Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers.

I have trouble with Dickens. I remember seeing a number of the books dramatised on TV – Sunday afternoon serials to be watched while eating tea in front of the telly: a rare treat. The plots are wonderful – but when you pick up the books, there's all the 'padding': all that exposition of social matters that Dickens penned. Okay, so it's not just padding – although it certainly helped, given that his stories were initially serialised in print – but an integral part of his work. But they seem to get in the way and I end up putting the book aside, frustrated.

Pickwick Papers, I decided, might be a little different. And thus far, I'm finding it really very funny.

After that, I think that Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks (effectively a 19th century novel, even though first published in 1901) is due a re-read, while I need to finally conquer Anthony Trollope's The Warden and Barchester Towers, which have been sitting on the shelf for years. And I've got a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford too; I've only read her Mary Barton previously.

Whatever happens in the coming 364 days, I feel as though I've got the start of the new year sorted in culinary and literary terms!