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Ian Rankin
The art of holiday reading
I always take a slew of books with me on holiday. Some I will have read before—Bleak House or Heart of Darkness, for example. Some will be recent non-fiction, like Simon Gray’s The Last Cigarette (Granta). There may be a biography of a maverick rock singer such as Tom Waits, or a psychedelic group such as Hawkwind. I’ll take a few contemporary thrillers—such as Romanno Bridge by Andrew Greig (Quercus) and crime novels by the likes of Allan Guthrie, James Lee Burke and mercurial French author Fred Vargas. Poetry? I’ve been meaning to re-read TS Eliot’s Four Quartets this past year or more. There are also books I haven’t finished yet, such as the latest from Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? (Doubleday). I’m doing an Open University course, so the coursework will also be coming. How many will I read? That depends on the weather. And I won’t take any books I see as “worthy” or “hard work.” It is supposed to be a holiday, after all.
Ian Rankin is a novelist
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