Read It In Books (17/5/13)

I'd love to know what happened to my attention span.

That and my ability to concentrate. I used to be able to read a book, watch a TV programme and listen to music simultaneously and know exactly what was happening in each. Now I find it difficult to get through typing an entire sentence because 'Come Dine With Me' is on in the background.

As for the possibility of reading a book? Not if there's anybody else in the house. And even if there isn't I can't sit still long enough to really dig into a story. I never get round to watching a film for pretty much the same reason. Tonight I could finally get round to viewing any one of the million films that are sat in the study and have been for years. I bought Fellowship Of The Ring on DVD on the day that I opened Speke and haven't got round to watching it yet.

I opened Speke in 2002.

So, if I can't actually watch a film or read a book, why do I keep buying the bloody things?

I'm in the middle of a book on Bowie, a song by song study of everything that he wrote in the seventies. It's in the style of Ian McDonald's Beatles book 'Revolution In The Head' which is the single greatest music book ever. The Bowie book isn't the single greatest music book ever, it's actually a bit dull and I'm a bit bored of it.

So I started reading the biography of ex-Villa, ex-Chelsea footballer Tony Cascarino. It's about how miserable being a footballer at the end of your career can be and most importantly it's really, really short so I won't have time to get bored.

Next week J and I have organised a few days away in the sun (Tenerife, Tuesday to Saturday, we deserve it) so I can catch up on a couple of books; I've got a Phillip Roth novel that I've been meaning to read, Grant Morrison's history of superhero comics (bear with me, it'll be great, he knows his stuff and can write) and a history of all of World War II waiting to go. That's ALL of World War II and I bought it myself because I thought it was about time I read something grown up. It's on the pile, it may be on the pile for longer than World War II lasted. I have previous for this. There's a great  Bob Dylan biog that I bought on the day that it was released that I've yet to get to. I very nearly accidentally bought the 20th anniversary edition las week.

The history of World War II still hasn't been read. That genuinely is longer than the war lasted.

Then there's all the Dickens that I bought in the early 90s and a couple of late period Thomas Pynchon books and obviously loads of music stuff and now our Tom (who is, quite brilliantly, upstairs listening to early R.E.M. Like, really early R.E.M, 12 years before he was born R.E.M. Class) is insisting that I read this comic series that he bought called Invincible. It's by the guy who wrote 'The Walking Dead' so it's bound to be good but there's so bloody much of it, too much to commit to, it's just too daunting a prospect, I can't find the energy to start.

So, given that I've already go all these books and I can't motivate myself to start any of them, let alone finish any, what did I do today?

I bought another three. Obviously.

A Jack Kerouac book 'Maggie Cassidy', 'Stone Junction' by Jim Dodge ( it's got an introduction by Thomas Pynchon and the page I skimmed seemed to read well) and Mile Davis' autobiography - but who could resist a book by a legendarily mental Jazz trumpeter whose first page describes hearing a band as "It was a motherf***er. Man, that shit was all up in my body"? Well, not me obviously.

So, with all this to choose from, as soon as I put the iPad down what am I going to do?

I'll probably troll through Twitter for a while, look at Facebook for a bit, flick between programmes that I'm not really interested in on the telly, maybe watch a bit of the Spanish cup final, couple of games of FIFA and suddenly it's midnight and I'm complaining that I've done nothing worthwhile.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Maybe I should just pick up a book and see what happens.....