Reading and writing

In my heart, I really don't like shopping on amazon but my bank account thinks it's a good idea. You see, some books you just have to own and John Connolly's The Reapers is one of those. Being a hardback man, it clocks in at around £20 in a real bookstore and it was £8 on amazon meaning I could buy the other two books I had my eye on for less and still have money left over! It's a weird game this discounting lark. For the record, the other two were Spares (Michael Marshall Smith) and The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder which is an old classic from WH Hodgson. Out of respect to my favourite bookstore, which struggles at the best of times, I took the excess, threw in a couple of extra quid and picked up a cool looking book called Stealing the Scream which is a true life detective story about how the famous painting was once stolen and the obsessiveness of one man to find it again.

Anyway, I was telling somebody about this on my way back from the Post Office and they said "I used to read a lot, but now I can't find the time." So I thought I would rustle up a quick top ten list of ways to find time to read... or most other things for that matter.

1. Turn off the TV. Watch what you want to watch and not what they want to throw at you.
2. No really... unless you're a TV critic, turn it off.
3. Wake up. You don't need eight hours sleep. Five or six hours is plenty. Do the math yourself. Do you know how many days of your one and only life you are pissing away like this?
4. Watch out for vampires. Those blood sucking idiots that take up lots of your time when they didn't really want anything. Cut them off.
5. Avert your eyes from facebook or myspace. Speaks for itself that one!
6. Double up on jobs. Read in the bath, while you're cooking... grab some audio books for the less important books and dump them on your pod. This is priceless when you're on holiday and driving.
7. Just read - you don't need an excuse. Down tools every now and then and just get on with it.
8. It will rain eventually, so washing the car is a fools errand!
9. (Wishing I hadn't gone for ten now!)
10. See 1. because I know you're unable to stay away from it.

Now you can read - or do something else that's important to you. Simple.

Haven't looked at 2H4D all week due to schedule with Burn, but this morning my heart called me back to it and it's still got 'it'. So will spend some time with it this afternoon... right now though I have to go to the school fair. If you have kids, this will also be known as the money pit...

(Later that same day.)
So, any money that I potentially saved had I not bought excess books anyway, was swallowed up by face painting, cakes, balloons and a ton of other stuff nobody really wanted, but we all had a good time. A huge flaw in my plan was a quick visit to the book stall, where every book was but 20p.

Fatal.

Two quid later and this weeks stack of books is rather large with over dramatic crime fiction, though to be fair to myself, seven of the eight I bought for Sarah. She reads so damn fast that it's the only way I'll get to read The Reapers before she does. I can make lots of time for reading but I do like to salivate over every single word if possible.

Talking of Sarah, her brother went in for a heart by-pass this week. He's 48. That's put the frighteners on me a bit. He used to be in the army and could run for miles as well as rowing and some other things I've never heard of. Fitness aside, that would be 20 years of ready meals taking its toll then, but my diet is not much better. Note to self: get it sorted.

Currently reading: The Reapers: John Connolly (of course)
Currently listening to: 4 Way Diablo: Monster Magnet