On Being Binge-Read
As I wait, anxiously, for publishers to break through the security cordon screaming, ‘Me, me! Let me be the one to publish your next undoubtedly brilliant novel’, I try to keep my chins up by staying productive. So how hath this little busy bee improved each shining hour during the past week? I repaired a skirt I haven’t been able to wear for months, I made half a litre of plum vodka and a jar of pickled prunes (looking good), went for a long and bracing walk along the seashore, and wrote a bit more of a book no-one may want.
Then I bumped into someone who brought me great joy and hope in these bleak times. ‘Laurie!’ she said, ‘I’m having such fun. I’m binge-reading everything you ever wrote!’
As far as I know this is my first instance of being binge-read and I can’t tell you how cockle-warming it is. Don’t ever be afraid to tell an author how much you like their books. Well…. perhaps tread carefully if they’re terribly grand or already laden with awards. Perhaps don’t approach too chummily if there’s a research assistant or bag-carrier trailing humbly in their wake. But generally speaking you can assume that any mid-list novelist is grateful for and touched by words of appreciation. Some of us don’t get out much, you know?
Just yesterday I was binge-browsing through your Collected Works, in order to choose one that I’ve forgotten just enough of to be able to take great pleasure in re-reading! Please, please keep writing!
I have all your books. Some I have both in paper back and on my Kindle. I’m a serial Graham reader.
Sometimes I read them all again, back to back.
Favourite (and this is hard) might be Gone with the Windsors. Then again it might be The Unfortunates. Or Mr. Starlight….
Please don’t stop.
I have read and reread all of your books. They are absolutely fantastic and you just can’t write them quickly enough for me. Please, please keep on writing and giving your loyal readers so much pleasure and amusement.
Most of the greats are not appreciated in their own time. Scant encouragement, I’m sure, for those whose bills are due in the here and now, but you are loved, respected and enjoyed by many of us who recognize comic genius when we see it.
Dear Laurie, hopefully you are writing well as I will be counting the days until your next book is published. Each book is more moving, more perceptive, and more compassionate than the last! You are an amazing observer! I have laughed and I have wept and I have read my way from ‘At Sea’ to ‘Dress Circle’ (which nearly broke my heart). I’m just about to start ‘Ten O’Clock Horses’. After that I will be waiting eagerly… thank you for these rambunctious meditations on life in all its flawed glory! I’m encouraging all my friends to read your books.
I’ve come late to this conversation but find it difficult to believe that you are not being published. I adored ‘Gone with the Windsors’ (re-read it at intervals and still laugh!) and ‘The importance of Being Kennedy’. Please can we have more like these two? I’m just starting ‘The Early Birds’ and loving the pace of it. Your breadth of interests and knowledge (research!?) is fascinating.
All of the above and more, your characters are my friends !!!!
I have all of your books & regularly re-read them (& buy them as presents for friends & family). Just finished Dr Dan’s Casebook & loved it.