Reading is a very private activity. I thought it would be interesting to make it public.
Begun as a new year’s resolution in 2010, I expected this blog to last only the few months that resolutions usually do; but somehow it’s still with me now, over ten years later. It’s outlasted careers and countries.
It’s a partial picture of me as a reader, as I spent my twenties more or less trying to complete the western cannon. I’m not going to say it’s complete, but it’s close. This blog began after that, during the many years I’ve spent wondering what to read next.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours
Alan Bennett
