Getting over my reading listlessness

It’s been a funny old year thus far for books – having for once not even kept a list, I’m struggling to remember what, if anything, I read while winter was still with us.

That wouldn’t be a first – it seems a sort of unofficial habit of mine: to start off slowly in January and pick up as the months pass.

Venice gave me a kick on the book front: after re-reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice for the umpteenth time, it was on to Donna Leon’s police procedurals set amid the canals and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

So far, I’ve read Death at La Fenice, Death in a Strange Country, The Anonymous Venetian, A Venetian Reckoning and Acqua Alta.

They good fun; quite dark and a bit obsessed with the Mafia and corruption, but with a cast of main characters that are reasonably well drawn. They're hardly the apotheosis of the genre, but they're enjoyable for when I want something light, which doesn't tax "the little grey cells" too much.

And there are plenty more in the series, but given the speed at which I gobble them up, I’m keeping a couple for summer and the beach.

I have also managed a couple of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels – Monstrous Regiment and then Night Watch, both of which were as brilliant as one expects from Sir Tez, plus Gore Vidal’s Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings, which was odd, since it had nowhere near the amount of sex I was hoping for, but was superb anyway and had me ordering another collection of Vidal’s essays straight away.

And then, as seen in yesterday’s review, Blake Morrison’s The Last Weekend.

That interrupted a re-read of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep – and thank goodness I could return to that on Sunday evening.

Re-reads are intriguing. There aren’t many books I’ve read more than once – let alone more than that. I should take that as a lesson and I’d easily and quickly be able to cull my library. But Chandler, as with Mann, would be at no risk of eviction.

There have been other bits and pieces in the past few months – I can rarely read history in one go and have two tomes on the ‘reading-in-process’ pile at present.

But my mind is already turning to my reading list for Collioure at the end of August. We barely took enough last year and, since my new case (the old one had to be Sellotaped up on the way back from Venice) is bigger and lighter, it shouldn’t be a problem to ensure a nice variety this time.

On the more serious front, I’ve promised myself I’ll take Elizabeth David: A Biography by Lisa Chaney.

On something of a crime fiction kick, I’m tempted to try one of Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels, which are set in Sicily, together with one of the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell, plus – as mentioned already – some more Donna Leon and inevitably, some Maigret.

I may pack the new collection of Vidal essays and possibly the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, plus some poetry: I’m about two thirds of the way through Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid, which has finally conveyed to me the glories of Greek mythology – not least in actually getting me familiar with a few of the stories. On these grounds, I’m contemplating some more Hughes.

Such a selection should keep me going. At least for a few days!

All a bit Brahms and list

Here we go again with confusion over gender roles and behavioural patterns.

On Friday afternoon, a female colleague decided that reveal to all and sundry on the floor some of the most basic differences between men and women: lists are one.

Apparently, men make lists. Women don't.

Hang on a moment – I'm always making lists. For starters, every Saturday morning, I sit in bed with a cup of Earl Gray and make at least one list. I cannot shop without lists. I know there's a theory that you should go to market and see what's there and then decide what you're going to cook, but then I'd get into a complete fluff over what to actually prepare, and I'd also be bound to forget some crucial ingredient or other.

But I also find lists helpful for organising such things as packing for trips away. And, of course, at Christmas they're absolutely essential on so many levels, from gift buying to menus to general chores. Indeed, in her new book, Delia's Happy Christmas, the patron saint of home cooks emphasises the value of making lists. So I'm in good company.

The colleague in question pointed out that what she really meant was that men like making lists to catalogue things or of sporting stats.

But is there really much of a difference? Both are to do with organising – neither variety are absolutely essential to the continuation of life.

Not that my colleague was ready to stop at lists. Collections are, apparently, another difference between males and females.

The former collect things. The latter do not.

At this point, someone interjected with the question of female collections of handbags and shoes. This was easily passed off as being 'acquisitiveness', not 'collecting'.

I finally chipped in, noting that I have collected things since childhood and have a number of collections. This was passed over with a comment that, "in general", women do not collect.

Well, much as it's nice not to be considered to be a "general" sort of example of the species, it's also just plain dumb.

How many women collect ornaments? How many women collect soft toys? Who are all those collections of china plates, thimbles and silver spoons aimed at? Because men are certainly not the prime target buyers.

What an oddity that, we we gain more and more actual, legal equality, some women seem more determined than ever to find differences between the sexes and to create ideas of specific gender behaviours and interests.

Oh well.

Anyway, it's been a successful day. We went down to Hoxton to a very good, independent wine merchant (who also sells cigars and teas and coffees). So that's the booze (including an absinthe set with glasses and proper slotted spoons) and the coffee and the cigars bought for Christmas. Since the festive chocolate arrived from France a couple of days ago, that's two things I can tick off the list.

Anyone who comes up with such nonsense could be mistaken for being a bit Brahms and list.

S is for Saturday, shopping and stock

It’s a rather sybaritic day, in other words.

As I plod into middle age, it becomes increasingly clear that food is truly one of life’s great pleasures.

Thus my Saturday, as so often, started with a mug of coffee, a few cookery books and paper for the compiling of lists. There are two lists – menus for three days and then the shopping list itself.

It is said that real foodies descend on the market sans such lists: they are prepared for whatever treasures they might unearth, and able instantly to know what they’ll conjure with their finds.

I am nowhere near that experienced or confident: it’s a racing certainty that, if I tried it, I’d forget something important. Like the wine or the crème fraîche – you know. So I sit up in bed with a coffee, browsing my books and making my lists.

For almost five years now, our little corner of Hackney has entertained a farmers’ market. It’s a haven for those who don’t share the rather widespread British belief that the belly is best served by taking a trolley around a supermarket and filling it with a week’s worth of ready-made meals, selections of crisps in perverse ‘favours’ such as Cajun squirrel and builder’s breakfast, and bottles of lemonade that have never been within a million miles of a lemon.

Until the farmer’s market arrived, helping to breathe new life into a street that had been three-quarters derelict for decades, I too had to endure the supermarket trip.

Now, I start by delivering my empty egg boxes back to the farmer I bought eggs from seven days earlier. If I have meat I want from him, I order it then and pick it up on the way back.

The next port of call is Vicki, my fishmonger. She has a small stall, full of wet fish, gleaming and bright on a bed of ice. This is a paradise all of its own – and as near as I get to that list-less shopping. The new-old shopping experience of the market means, today, waiting quite a while as, with consummate skill, she fillets eight herring for the customer in front of me.

The British have forgotten herring. We used to eat it by the ton, but now we neglect it. Unfortunately, The Other Half isn’t a big fan, so I take a nice piece of tuna, which will be poached later in a tomato sauce with garlic, chilli and rosemary. A Spurs fan, she has us all, I suspect, categorised by our interest or otherwise in the game. Mr Herring is a West Ham follower: they discuss the possibility of coach Gianfranco Zola being poached by Chelsea (but not quite as nicely as my tuna). When it’s my turn, we consider Manchester City’s chances this afternoon at Portsmouth.

At a stall that sells Dartmoor beef, the farmer tells me in jovial fashion about dealing with the recent snow.

At the French deli, Stephane updates me on how well the move to their new premises is going.

And as always, I exchange pleasantries with Turkish Tony in the general shop.

This is shopping as it should be: a sociable affair; friendly and not rushed. Food is worth taking time for: producers and shopkeepers worth building relationships with.

Back home, once everything has been unpacked and put away, I roughly chop onion, carrot and celery. Celery is one of the miracles of the market – it comes covered in soil, and it smells and tastes, for goodness sake. Smells and tastes, not of water and insipid nothingness, but of celery – real celery. Peppercorns, bay leaves from the tree in the garden, parsley stalks and crushed garlic cloves go into the pot too, before the water is added. I’m in the mood for more risotto in the coming days, and good stock is essential.

And it’s hardly as though making stock is difficult or expensive. This is another joy – knowing how do make these building bricks, and knowing what a difference they make.

Then it’s time to consider lunch: since we’re doing our own thing, I chop more celery, a couple of shallots, some chilli and some more garlic and sauté them gently in olive oil. Re-hydrated couscous is added, together with a few pine kernels and some raisins. Then the whole mix is seasoned and packed into a halved and cored courgette and a yellow pepper to be baked. How easy is this? Tasty, cheap and healthy too.

Some locals complain about the market. They complain about the £3.50 loaves of bread that have taken on an almost mythical status amongst those who have heard, who have never been but who like to carp.

One day, a neighbour was complaining thus to me in my local pub. Every so often, she went outside for a cigarette (over a fiver for 20), between swigs of an almost-£3-a-pint stout. How odd to think that £3.50 for an organic seven-day sour is considered particularly expensive alongside much more ephemeral pleasures.

But that’s what so many Britons seem to think – that food is merely fuel: it should be cheap as chips, should take as little time as possible to prepare and should be consumed in front of the telly, in a house that doesn't even have a dining table.

For myself, I’ll continue to take my time, to appreciate and learn, thank you. It’s the only properly sybaritic approach.