A Glimpse of My Bookshelf

A psychiatrist would certainly have a field day with my bookshelf and learn much more about my diseased brain from its slipshod appearance than from the books it contains

Leaving that to one side, here are some of the books taking up a part of one shelf of one of my bookcases.

From the right

• I am a great fan of Hilary Mantel and have read five of her books with increasing admiration and awe. I have to admit, though, a year or so down the line, that I can hardly remember anything about them. I think she should try to make her writing more compelling...

• I could never really get into Birdsong, despite its many excellent reviews.

• The Roman Missal was thrust upon me by my mother for my Confirmation in October 1956. In those days, of course, the mass was all in Latin with the exception of the sermon, which might as well have been in Latin too.

• In my opinion, The Big Picture, is the best of the Douglas Kennedy books. Unbeatable in its genre.

• Ava Gardner was an extraordinary and fascinating woman but, for what it's worth, she was not my "type", any more than Marilyn Monroe was. I inclined more towards the likes of Audrey Hepburn or Sarah Miles.

• Readers of this blog will know all the good I think of Elizabeth Jane Howard, the equal in a very different way to her one-time husband and near-neighbour on my bookshelf, Kingsley Amis. Curiously enough, I am now reading a book with almost the same title: Light Years by James Salter. This is proving to be be an extraordinarily good book, composed rather like a pointillist painting. Salter's first book was called The Hunters. It made a deep impression on me when I read it as an 18-year-old. I think it was one of the first serious works of contemporary fiction that I read.

• The Jewel in The Crown is another fine novel about a country I know very little about despite the fact that my stepfather spent a considerable part of his life there.