A Writer Reads, by Catriona

When you’re on vacation (aka holiday), do you take a break from reading crime fiction, never mind writing it? Do you read at all?

Take a break . . . from reading? As part of a treat-like experience? Um, no. I hear other writers saying they read differently now, or can't read while writing, or have to avoid their own genre, and I'm forced to conclude that either I have a rare talent for compartmentalisation, or I'm dead lucky, or I'm not a real writer.

Let me talk you through my last and next holidays (post-Bouchercon beach trip and Christmas). Because I do read differently from usual when I'm draft-loose and edit-free.

Before I set off for San Diego at the end of August, I had reached the Ws in the alphabet. (I keep trying to sell this alphabetical TBR method; no luck so far). So I packed JOAN IS OKAY by Weike Wang and A FATAL GLOW by Valerie Wilson Wesley. 

JOAN IS OKAY is okay - or maybe a dark comedy about an ICU doctor in New York in 2020 wasn't the best choice for someone getting over COVID. But, by the same token, VWW's latest spooky culinary cosy was perfect.

Then it was off to Ventura with my Bcon haul to read them in sunglasses, smear the pages with Banana Boat and get sand in the bindings. Can you see the organising principle of my holiday reading?

It's not generally applicable, but my "having the same name as me or being Robyn Gigl" rule, led to a week of utter bliss, with three counts of NJ attorney, Erin McCabe, absolutely owning the corruption all around her, and a chaser that Stephen King called "authentically terrifying". (Neil kept asking me, "Are you authentically terrified yet?". The answer was no because I'd read Gabino Iglesias's THE DEVIL TAKES YOU HOME a while back and the immunity hasn't worn off yet. Great yarn, though, SUNDIAL. By and large, Catrionas can really write😉. )

Then I came home and on the weekend between sweeping up all the sand and the Monday of actually going back to work, I couldn't decide whether to pick more special treats or go back to the alphabet.

Reader, I did both. I read my way through the rest of the Ws and thereby luxuriated in three of the best books of the year.

I've been gushing enthusing about Richard Yates and Robin Yeatman online already, so let me tell you about Raynor Winn's LANDLINES. This is her third book about walking long-distance paths in the UK, following THE SALT PATH and THE WILD SILENCE and they are life-changing. They're not just nature books: they're about long-lived love; homelessness - both the experience and the politics; philosophies of medicine and illness; and the climate crisis. On balance, they're hopeful, but never twee.

And now I'm back to the start, back to the As. This is what's coming:

Erin Adams' debut, which leapt off the dealer's table at Bouchercon last year, and a #MeToo inflected . . . I think it's a romcom. We'll see.

And soon it'll be Christmas, when I'm going to pluck the ripest fruit from my TBR in an alphabet-be-damned Bacchanalia of reading joy. I just went through the shelves a minute ago and picked out these:

Bliss! Persephone's re-issue of a handbook to women's novels in Britain, 1914-1939, Juno Dawson's Christmas YA, another diary of running a secondhand bookshop by the grumpmeister himself, Ann Cleeves, Shawn Cosby, the last ever Ruth Galloway, Joanne Harris's menopausal Carrie White, that book I'll be the last person in the world to read, that other book I'll be the last person . . .

Then I stopped. Because my holiday is two weeks long and I was only up to K. 

Of course, K is a landmark letter when you're in the business of trying to save things for a special occasion. I'm determined to do it too. I will read this on the couch, by fairylight and candlelight and firelight, in a house full of food. It won't be easy though. 

There are many criteria when it comes to choosing the books for the best two weeks' reading of the year: must have a celebrity biography, some non-fiction, poetry never hurts (I've been hinting about Ben Lerner's NIGHTLIGHTS pre-birthday), a sure thing or two, a gamble or two . . . But truly, the question of genre never occurs to me.

Cx