Reading, Music, and the Pub, by Neil McGowan
It’s been a week of firsts for me. Well, not really, but it feels like it, after the last couple of years. Firstly, I went to my local pub for a quiet drink with my wife and in-laws; I worked out whilst there that it was two years to the day since the last time I’d set foot in a pub. It was a pleasant afternoon, and the conversation ranged back and forth over various topics but as we are all avid readers, we spent some time discussing books and comparing the recent titles we’ve read. What was interesting was the way all of us had read outside our usual genres; myself, I’ve dabbled with the classics in addition to my usual diet of crime, science fiction, and horror. Some of them I liked; some...not so much. What did become clear was what I really wanted, regardless of genre, was story: I wanted something to happen to the characters, good or bad, and for them to change during the course of the story. I’ll not name the books I didn’t get on with. (My policy is to either give a positi...