I suspect fellow bibliophiles and reading addicts will identify with this, I certainly do. After a couple of decades as a bookseller, reviewer, editor and writer I generally accrue more books than I can find time to read (let alone review), and I’m in the fortunate position of regularly being sent interesting new ones to look at. And yet I still love a good browse round a decent bookstore, especially second hand and charity ones, where you never know what you’ll find. Couple of weeks ago, despite having a pile of new and forthcoming books waiting on my attentions (and having several on the go at the same time) I still went off with a chum to rummage through the charity bookstores on Edinburgh’s Southside.

(via Spinning About)

I decided since the bulk of my reading recently has been fiction (prose and graphic novel) I would limit myself to only non-fiction (like that matters when you have piles overflowing the shelves into corners, but hey, whatever justification works, right?). And I ambled off after our bookstore troll to the pub with several books – couple of history works, a pop science book and a collection of poetry. Necessary when you have so many other books waiting? Technically, practically, no. On the level of my reading soul though, yes, of course! And it made me feel better.

Most recently my reading has been focused very much on the books of authors I will be talking to next week when I am again chairing a couple of events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, as I read then re-read to try and pick out some relevant questions for the events, but it’s good to vary the reading diet – and for a break – to dip into some other pieces, so I am also taking quick peeks at Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a history of the American West but from the perspective of the Native Americans, a book I have been meaning to read for years, and which I found on the shelves of one of those charity bookstores recently. Which I take as a sign from the literary gods and accordingly grabbed it.

For those interested, the two events I’ll be chairing next weekend as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival are a talk with Karrie Fransman and Rob Davis, both of whom I have followed for years and who are creators who push the ways in which the comics medium can tell a story, and Evie Wyld (one of the Granta best new young writers) and Joe Sumner about their collaboration, Everything is Teeth (I’ll post a review of that on here soon).