Believe it or not

When I was young I read fiction, first all of the children\’s books, then on to adult books of various standards (influenced by my mother towards the popular and old-fashioned), then to the classics, then, as I recount in my memoir, to the high classics. As I aged much of my reading was, necesarily, non-fiction, culminating in the enormous amount of readung I had to condense in the Encyclopaedia, and I therefore needed the light relief of fiction under the headings of crime and comedy.

And that continued on for many years. But as I passed the 70 age stone, and headed on at high speed through the night towards the 80 stone, I began working on my memoir, trying to get my life in the rear vision mirror in order so it made sense, formed patterns, extracted meaning. And as I did I began reading the lives of other sinners (no interest in the lives of saints), other human beings also trying to make sense of lives that had rushed by and were almost over before they had seemed properly begun.

Very quickly I discovered that autobiography was stranger than fiction, that the real lives of people were of more interest than the invented lives of novels, and my reading switched almost totally to an immersion in the reality of those who had come before me and those who had shared a planet with me.

And my second memoir is firmly underway with an editor.