Shoes and ships and sealing wax, by Catriona

Do you try to stay current in your reading, to keep abreast of the market, or do you read from your TBR pile at random? Do you read classic mysteries?

This question's caught me at a funny time. There's my usual answer and then there's my this month answer. 

My usual answer is that I read exactly what I want to with no consideration except enjoyment: I don't read aspirationally anymore; I'm well-past trying to impress anyone; and the notion of guilt about pleasure is mystifying. So, it's sheer literary hedonism. Three middle-grade capers about a racehorse? Loved 'em.  Henry IV Part One? Devoured it. A social history of the British High Street? Yes, please.

But when Rob Osler - whose second Harriet Morrow mystery I will be acquiring later this month - came up with the 5:1 plan, I was in. Basically, his suggestion is that every fifth book you read should be by an author from an under-represented or historically disadavantaged group. Thing is, I checked my TBR shelf (alphabetical, which is how I read through them too) and disovered that there was no run of five or more books by straight whites, so I was already doing it. I'm a bit light on men sometimes, but there's usually one every five or not far off it. Anyway, recent reports on the plight of straight white men in publishing have been . . . bollocks. They're not under-represented; it's just that loss of privilege feels a lot like injustice until it's given a moment's reflection.

As to trying to stay current, hahahahaha. My #FridayReads recommendations are full of me overflowing with astonished admiration about a book everyone read last year. Or the year before. But I'm doing a service to my fellow lazy readers, right? 

I broke the news of this 2021 gem . . . in 2025

And what is this "market" of which you speak? I write 1920-40s detective stories, comedies and domestic noir, all under the same name. As my editor herself said, "the brand's a mess". So, given that I can't even write as if there's such a thing as a market, it was never very lilely that I'd read that way.

I do read - re-read mostly - classic mysteries, mind you. Sometimes only A Surfeit of Lampreys or 4.50 From Paddington will do. I don't read many new-to-me classics for the first time, though. I've tried but I've usually come to the conclusion that there's a good reason they're forgotten. One exception was discovering Anna Katherine Green. I read That Affair Next Door expecting a curio, but it was terrific!

So, that's the usual way of it. But, for the last month, in the run-up to Left Coast Crime where I'm moderating a panel and interviewing the toastmaster, I've read as follows:

• Claire Booth - Throwing Shadows (a sheriff in the Ozarks)
• Leslie Karst - Death Al Fresco (Sally Solari culinary cosy)
• Audrey Lee - The Mechanics of Memory (Edgar-nominated fever dream set in a psych ward)
• Leslie Karst - Justice is Served (re-read of a memoir / cookbook)
• Gigi Pandian - The Library Game (locked room puzzle)
• Leslie Karst - Molten Death (the Hawaii tourist board might want a word)
• Susan Shea - Death and the Missing Dog (doing up a chateau in Burgundy, plus a corpse)
• Leslie Karst - Waters of Destruction (the Hawaii tourist board slightly mollified)

One way to look at that is that is would be a very strange month's reading if it was a free choice, right? But the other way to look at it is . . . I got to call all of that working! 

When I'm finished Waters of Destruction, I'm going back to the TBR, via a Jodi Picoult I found in a wee free library by a footpath last weekend. Then it's Bob the Drag Queen's experimental novel about Harriet Tubman, although Joy Fielding's got a new one out . . . and on we go.

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