Three for the Road

Friday March 9, 2007

This week I was overtaken by a three for two urge. I get like this sometimes, the compulsion to walk to Borders with the determination to find three paperbacks in one of their endless three for two sales. Sometimes I browse for ages, growing increasingly frustrated at what’s on offer before losing the urge and abandoning the project.

This time I noticed that many of the three for two books made up a considerable part of the list in the recent one hundred books meme. I considered the puzzle “which came first, the meme or the three for two offer?”, but only briefly. I wasn’t particularly tempted by any of these books on this occasion, athough in record time I did select and purchase three recently published novels:

  1. Restless by William Boyd. This is a spot of espionage circa 1939. I’ve never had much luck with Boyd in the past, so we shall see.
  2. Johnny Come Home by Jake Arnott. Arnott’s fourth novel, following his Long Firm trilogy, and set in the 1970s. One of David Bowie’s favourite writers, apparently. I enjoyed The Long Firm, which followed the exploits of various real and fictional London gangsters from the sixties to the nineties, so I’m looking forward to this one.
  3. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney. Award winning murder in 1867 Canada.

The first two may end up as holiday reads for me, but I’m already quite a way into the third. It’s not quite shaping up to my expectations, but I’ll save any reservations for a full review when I’ve finished it.

Pardon me, I actually bought four books this week when I saw Stephen King’s Cell on half price offer. I’ve never read anything by King. Odd I know – missing a small slice of popular culture, rather like admitting to never watching an episode of Star Trek. (I’ve never seen Battlestar Galactica though, maybe this is like never reading anything by Clive Barker?)

Another first for me was buying a book in a supermarket. Bread, milk, cat food and a Stephen King novel. Hmmm, there’s something slightly odd about that…

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