Binge reading

It all started with a recommendation from a friend, who was reading Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. You should read it, she said, it's brilliant. Said friend happens to be my best friend; we survived an English Literature degree together; we have much the same taste in books. Sitting as I was in my boyfriend's kitchen, waiting for him to get home from a night out, with only my Kindle for company, I downloaded it. I probably read for an hour that night. And the next morning I read for another couple of hours. In fact, I finished the book, but I was enjoying lying in bed reading so much that I immediately downloaded (the benefits of wifi) another book that I'd heard about on the radio - So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson - and started that. And I was enjoying that so much that I read a lot more of it over the next couple of days. And then I had a work trip coming up, and thought I might finish it on the train, so I downloaded The Psychopath Test as well, because Jon Ronson was just the right balance of interesting and readable. I stopped reading the news while eating my breakfast and started reading the book instead. And last night I was getting towards the end of it so I thought I'd download something else for when I'd finished. Aforementioned best friend and I had been bookshop browsing earlier in the day and I'd seen another book that had been on the radio a while ago - The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion - so (in true Burglar Bill fashion) I downloaded that. And then I lay in bed this morning and just read it. All of it. All in one go. And then I finally stopped, and thought that 4 books in a week is pretty good given how little time I think I have to read, and how many books I've tried and failed to get into in the last few weeks. Next up... who knows? I'm contemplating Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. Or The Rosie Effect, sequel to The Rosie Project. Or maybe something from the stash of unread things. It's been a while, but it turns out I still love reading after all.