Ten Years in the Tub (50 page)

I really want to read every book I bought this month. That's true of every month, of course, and usually nothing happens, but this month I really
really
want to read the books I bought. I have just been to a wonderful literary festival in Iceland, where I spent time with Siri Hustvedt and Andrey Kurkov and lots of other interesting, companionable writers; and it's true that there is a slight possibility, judging from my track record, that either of these novels might fall off the bedside pile at some stage in the future, but surely they can see that the commitment is there? And the two works of nonfiction, by John Carey and Ernst Gombrich, have the most perfect titles imaginable: I desperately need to know what the uses of the arts are, and the great John Carey, who wrote the great
The Intellectuals and the Masses
, is undoubtedly the man to tell me, and thus make me feel better about the ways in which I waste my time. He may even tell me that I'm not wasting my time, as long as he manages to get solitaire and football under the arts umbrella. The title of Gombrich's book, meanwhile, cleverly
isolates the precise area in which I am most ignorant. How did he know?

February 2006

BOOKS BOUGHT
:

     
  
Eminent Churchillians
—Andrew Roberts

     
  
The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax
—Andrew Roberts

     
  
The Tender Bar: A Memoir
—J. R. Moehringer

     
  
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
—George Saunders

     
  
Only in London
—Hanan Al-Shaykh

     
  
Traffics and Discoveries
—Rudyard Kipling

     
  
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
—G. K. Chesterton