So much clutter

Apparently despite all those TV programmes and media articles about decluttering, if anything the problem's getting worse.

Studies show that a third of the possessions in a typical UK home aren't used. Not only that but many people have forgotten they owned the items in the first place.

Garages are used more and more not for housing cars but storing all those items we can't fit into the house.

Jenny and I are pretty ruthless about getting rid of unwanted items, but even so there are still a few surplus items that could swiftly be disposed of. But it's easy to find bogus reasons for hanging onto things.

When I met Jenny I was living in a tiny bedsit, and I simply couldn't buy very much because there was absolutely no storage space. As we moved up the property ladder to bigger flats and then bigger houses, of course we acquired lots of bits and pieces to fill the extra room. So if we got rid of too much there would just be a lot of strange empty spaces.

Our biggest possession is books. We must have at least a thousand but we chuck our very few because we fully intend to re-read most of them. In reality most of them don't get re-read, they just sit there gathering dust or sometimes they're so old they simply fall to pieces.

Some of you will recall that my mother was a chronic hoarder. Luckily I haven't inherited that particular trait.

Who is Jane?

Most novelists seem to assume that their readers all have photo-graphic memories and can follow every twist and turn of their books without the author's help. Even if the plot is labyrinthine and the book is overflowing with characters, you're expected to keep track of it all quite effortlessly.

Unfortunately some of us have such appalling memories we find it hard to keep up and could do with a little assistance from the author to ward off galloping confusion.

The sort of thing that bugs me:

• A chapter that starts without naming the character and you're supposed to know who it is by their physical description on page two.
• Mention of a character's tragic accident sometime in the past, and you're meant to remember what was the tragic accident.
• A character who refers to his "harrowing" divorce. Why was it harrowing? Was that explained somewhere?
• A character with a voluminous back story that's impossible to remember but fifty pages on it becomes crucial to the plot and you're meant to be familiar with it.
• A character called Jane suddenly appears on page 77. Is this a new character or was she mentioned earlier in the book?

Well, you get the general idea. Maybe some authors think it's insulting people's intelligence to keep clarifying details you might have forgotten. But that's preferable to finishing a book in a state of confusion because the reader is assumed to be absorbing everything with sponge-like efficiency. I'm afraid not. My memory is more like some slippery surface that things may or may not stick to.

How wonderful it would be if on seeing Jane on page 77 I'd think, Ah yes, she's Tim's cousin, she has short cropped hair, she's allergic to peanuts and her roof leaks.

Fat chance.

Unloved amendments

A huge controversy over the news that Puffin Publishing have made a stack of amend-ments to books by the children's author Roald Dahl after a "review of the language" to make them more suitable for younger readers.

Words like "fat" and "idiot" and "ugly" have been removed on the basis (I assume) that they might encourage impressionable youngsters to be abusive and judgmental.

However there has been vociferous criticism of the changes from all and sundry, including the Prime Minister and the Queen Consort. They defend the original texts and don't see why they should be altered. They say the changes mute the vigour of the books, which thousands of children are still enjoying, although Dahl himself died in 1990.

Surely it's all rather a storm in a teacup. I can't see what's wrong with a few reasonable changes to his books to reflect modern life and remove possibly offensive language. It's not as if Dahl's books are being totally rewritten and turned into something unrecognisable as his.

Anyone who objects to the original texts is free to stop buying them and find something more "wholesome" for their kids to read. No one is forcing them to read Roald Dahl. Why not keep printing the original versions for those who enjoy them, and just ignore those who don't?

As far as I know, none of his extensive family have objected to the changes. It would be interesting to know what they think.

PS: Books are routinely altered, and sometimes totally rewritten, after a publisher's editor has looked at them. But nobody complains about that.

PPS: Puffin say they will in future publish both the original and amended texts.

PPPS: Alice in Wonderland might need some changes, especially to the Red Queen who keeps threatening to behead everyone!

Bookworm reawakened

Journalist Nancy Jo Sales decided she was too addicted to phones and screens when she realised she had read only five books in 2021, and only eight in 2020. She used to be a compulsive bookworm, devouring books at every opportunity.

She determined to look at screens a lot less and get back to reading books. And she succeeded. She has read 46 books in 2022, and plans to read at least 60 next year. She feels happier, she's sleeping better, and above all it's fun.

Luckily I haven't succumbed to a screen obsession. Not having a smartphone helps. Not having a craving for attention also helps. So I've continued to be a persistent reader, getting through around 60 books a year.

But I'm always astonished when I get on a bus or train nowadays and most of the passengers are on their phones. Not a book in sight. There's so much wonderful stuff to read but they don't want to know. Or am I just a book snob?

I read a lot first thing in the morning, as I often wake up at 4 or 5 am. I also read when I'm waiting to see the doctor or the practice nurse.

I can't read for hours at end, and I don't find anything "un-put-down-able". I read 10 or 20 pages of something and then need to have a break before I continue.

Even if I read a book and conclude that it's a clunker - badly written, hardly any plot, one-dimensional characters and too many loose ends - there's usually something to take away from it, if only a few memorable crooks and eccentrics.

Who could ever forget Ebenezer Scrooge or Sherlock Holmes or Robin Hood (or Hermione Granger if you're a Harry Potter fan)?

Books galore

When does book collecting become book hoarding? When do you have a normal number of books and bookshelves, and when does it become abnormal? When does book-buying become such a wild compulsion that you no longer have enough bookshelves for them, and there are piles of books all over the floor?

People with absurd numbers of books (like tens of thousands) will justify them by saying they fully intend to read them all one day, or they're of sentimental value, or they can't bear to part with old favourites, or they're related to a particular interest (like hundreds of bird books).

Jenny and I have always kept our book stock to a modest level - about a thousand books at the last count - by aiming to discard as many books as we buy. This routine has served us well so far. Luckily there's a charity second-hand bookshop just down the road. so our abandoned books will find new readers. Of course we may simply be encouraging book hoarders to buy dozens of cheap second-hand books....

There's a temptation to acquire as many books as your home can accommodate. The first flats Jenny and I lived in were too small for large numbers of books, so we were more likely to "read and discard", but as we moved to bigger flats the need for a rapid recycling of books declined and they tended to linger.

We keep a lot of books on the basis that we're sure to re-read them some day, only to find that many of them never get re-read and just gather dust. Sooner or later our tastes change and that wonderful old book from ten years ago suddenly seems clunky and rambling and ready to be thrown out.

At least I don't buy books I know very well I'll never read, like Ulysses or War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time. That's a few less to worry about.

Familiar flaws

I've read several thousand novels in my life, so many that whenever I'm immersed in a new book I can see all the flaws as well as the merits. Which doesn't mean I don't enjoy the book, it just means I'm unlikely to be gushing with praise. If it's really bad I won't be rereading it, it'll be off to the charity bookshop.

However many awards the book has picked up, however many celebrities have recommended it, if there are shortcomings or defects, I'll spot them pretty quickly as I'm well attuned to what's good writing and what isn't.

I'll react instantly to one-dimensional characters, an overabundance of characters, implausible plots, irrelevant sub-plots, clunky metaphors, rambling descriptions, high-flown language, confusing flashbacks and flash-forwards, factual inaccuracies and so on. They just leap out at me.

I always wonder why the author couldn't see all these faults when they were writing the book, or why their editor didn't see them and suggest some hefty rewriting. I can't be the only one who sees all the faults and wonders why they weren't corrected.

Not that I would ever stop reading books, however flawed and irritating they may be. I get huge pleasure out of reading. I love interesting characters and original plots and unexpected twists, I love trying to guess the endings, I love quirky oddballs I can easily identify with, I love sad, lonely characters who find love and happiness. And I love being whisked out of my familiar everyday surroundings to a completely different world someone else has imagined.

Books are a bit like people. They may have glaring faults but we overlook them because they also have endearing and inspiring qualities we can't do without. And we know they won't go on a drunken rampage or wreck the car.

Re the pic: I'd thoroughly recommend City of Girls. Beautifully written, very entertaining.

Balancing the books

I like indepen-dent bookshops. A lot have closed down because they just couldn't make ends meet, but others somehow soldier on year after year due to the sheer determination and ingenuity of the owners.

There's a great independent bookshop in Belfast called No Alibis. As the name suggests, it specialises in crime books, but it has a more general stock as well. Jenny and I dropped in a while back for a talk by the Australian crime writer Jane Harper.

There's also Keats and Chapman, a second-hand bookshop I'm embarrassed to say I've never checked out (well, it's a bit off the beaten track).

Lots of other people like independent bookshops too, and often come to the rescue if they're in danger of going under.

When John Westwood, who runs the Petersfield Bookshop in Hampshire, specialising in antique and second-hand books, found he hadn't sold a single book all day, one of his staff tweeted the worrying news, and in no time orders were flooding in from all over the world.

John was astonished. "We had someone call from Inverness [in Scotland], telling us they wanted to spend £10 on any book - they didn't care what, they just wanted to support us. Then we had a guy come in who told us he lived locally but had never visited before. His friend in San Francisco saw the tweet and told him he had to go in and buy something."

He has had to bring in extra volunteer staff to help deal with the backlog of hundreds and hundreds of orders.

"It's truly amazing. I think it really shows the passion people still feel for books. The feel of them, the smell of them. That can never be replaced by anything else."

So the shop started by John's father in 1958 has a new lease of life. And all thanks to the awesome power of Twitter.

Pic: John Westwood

Literary gaffes

I love books. I love reading. I've always got a book on the go and a pile of unread books I'm looking forward to. If I'm not reading a book, I feel intellect-ually and emotionally under-nourished.

But there are certain literary failings that crop up over and over again (in novels, that is) and regularly annoy the hell out of me. For instance:

• Endings that leave half a dozen plot strands unresolved. I mean, whatever happened to Wendy? Did she finally leave Tom or did they kiss and make up? And whatever happened to Sophie? Did she ever kick her heroin habit?
• A constant parade of uninteresting minor characters who're instantly forgettable and add nothing to the plot. Why not leave them all out?
• A plot so complicated and full of twists and turns that it's impossible to keep track if you have a poor memory and an IQ less than 250.
• A pretentious writing style that equates obscure words and references with literary merit and equates simplicity with lack of imagination.
• Numerous flash-forwards and flash-backs that leave me thoroughly confused and wondering which day or year or century we're currently in.
• Stories told by several different narrators which never quite come together and leave gaping holes in the plot that nobody ever explains.
• A book that would have been perfect at 300 pages, but the author thought it needed another 200 pages to do justice to their literary brilliance.
• Astonishing coincidences and lucky breaks that miraculously save a character from a sticky end. The unexpected £50,000 inheritance from a long-forgotten aunt or the sudden discovery of an identical twin sister living in Sidcup.

Still, these habitual flaws are all part of the package. Something as complex as a novel is bound to go astray somewhere. A novel perfectly written, perfectly plotted, and easy to follow, has probably never existed, and never will.

Callous neglect

A new survey says the average British household owns 138 books, but less than half of them have been read. The others are poor lonely things that have been callously neglected.

Our own bookshelves have a lot more than 138 books - more like a thousand, I would say. But the unread portion is probably about right - something like half. So why are they unread, I hear you asking?

1) We know they're excellent books and we fully intend to read them when the time is ripe. When we're both retired maybe.
2) We read a few pages of the book, couldn't really get into it, but kept it in case we were more attuned at some later date.
3) We didn't know we even had the book. We must have bought it some time. Or maybe somebody gave it to us. We must read it.

One journalist* suggested "It would be a slightly scary household where every single book had been read." Indeed it would. It would suggest powers of concentration, determination and enthusiasm bordering on the miraculous.

It would be almost as scary if none of the books had been read, and the whole collection was merely an attempt to impress any well-read visitors. It would be awkward though if the visitor suddenly asked you what you thought of Jonathan Franzen's views on family dynamics.

The same journalist guessed that the volumes in the lavatory were most likely to be read, though probably not if you were busy vomiting at the time.

But there's something very cosy and reassuring about bookshelves, whether the books are read or unread. The mere fact that many of the books were written decades or even centuries ago gives a sense of continuity and permanence that soothes all those hovering anxieties.

That is, until one of your oldest paperbacks simply disintegrates as you're lovingly dusting it, and turns into a useless heap of confetti.

* Ben Milne of the BBC

Spoil yourself

It's generally asssumed that book-readers don't like spoilers - too much information about the plot and what happens at the end. The big pleasure of reading is supposedly the "wait and see" element.

But an experiment by Californian psychologists suggests that actually this isn't true. They found that people who read stories containing spoilers actually enjoyed them more than the untouched version.

This took them by surprise, so much so that they're struggling to come up with any convincing explanation of why this might be. They wonder for instance if people reach a deeper understanding of a story when they aren't preoccupied with the plot and its complexities.

Journalist Alison Flood says that when reading a horror story she likes to check that the hero/heroine is still alive at the end. With romantic stories, she likes to find out straightaway who gets off with whom. She insists this unorthodox peeking doesn't affect her enjoyment at all.

Personally I don't like to be told the entire plot of a novel before I start reading it, though in some cases the plot is so fiendish that a summary I could refer to when totally confused would be handy (Nicole Krauss's The History of Love comes to mind).

And I do admit to thumbing through the pages to find out if my favourite character ends up alive or dead, or if the odious wife-beater eventually gets his come-uppance. Sometimes my curiosity is so great I just can't wait for another 200 pages to satisfy it.

But if the "wait and see" element is so crucial, how come we like rereading books, when we already know exactly what happens? Shouldn't we be throwing them in the dustbin?

Unputdownable or unreadable?

When is a book a good book? Is it only the literary critics who're expert enough to decide? Or is the ordinary reader's opinion just as valid?

I get constantly annoyed by the lingering belief that there's some kind of literary elite who know better than you and I what's a talented, well-crafted book and what's ham-fisted rubbish.

There's a continual assumption that only those who've studied literature at some fancy university, or hung out with famous authors, or are themselves authors, have enough discernment to tell the wheat from the chaff, the humdingers from the penny-dreadfuls.

I say this having just sampled two novels heaped with praise by the self-proclaimed experts, which seemed to me anything but praiseworthy. Everything from the plot to the characters to the writing itself seemed sadly lacking.

The cognoscenti of the book world would no doubt regard my opinions as worthless and uninformed. Yet I studied literature at school, I've read thousands of books and for many years I was a bookseller. Why would my opinions be any less valid than those of the literati?

Nobody would suggest that ordinary football fans are incapable of worthwhile opinions about football. Or that ordinary music-lovers can't have sensible opinions about music. Yet there's still this sniffy elitism about books.

So let's hear it for all those anonymous readers, Jo and Joanna Page-Turner, who're as entitled as anyone to proclaim the Booker Prize Winner a load of pretentious twaddle, or that well-known "literary giant" an overrated, long-winded dwarf.