LOST IN LITERATURE: THE PETER MAY EFFECT

I'm often impatient, infuriating, and - apparently - annoyingly inquisitive. In my academic life, I have had to become engrossed within huge tomes of social, legal, and scientific data, regularly scanning the tedious text for the golden nugget; the bottom line, the epicenter of the empirical data. This is always a systemie slog with my sense of cu riosity in constant conflict with fuy desire to achieve timely certainty.

As a cop I recall the ‘Police Promotions Examination Manual’ (containing both the Sergeants’ & Inspectors’ curriculum), housed in a blue hardback cover resembling a brick, but marginally bigger. This publication was my apex of anxiety, although I guess I used this pain to focus on passing both examinations in a matter of months so that I could wave goodbye to the wretched object. 

Works of fiction frequently fared the same fate. Anything that meandered, plodded, or sought to describe every brick in the wall of the invented scene, was simply discarded. I have lost count of the novels that I started and subsequently shelved by chapter three. I wonder, am I alone in this trait?

In 2014 The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, won the  Pulitzer Prize for fiction, although, according to research by e-bookseller Kobo, less than half of purchasers actually finished it. If that wasn’t depressing enough, Solomon Northrop’s nineteenth-century autobiography Twelve Years a Slave was completed by only a fraction over 28% of readers. I am guessing that the vast majority of cinemagoers remained in their seats when they watched the multi-awarding-winning film version. These statistics are brutal, but to be fair, looking over my shoulder at my bookcase, there are books that I haven’t even opened; one remains sealed in its protective cellophane wrap. However, nearly seven years ago something astonishing happened to me – on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean equidistant from London and my final journey’s end, Tenerife. Traveling alone, and facing an uncharacteristic week by the pool, my daughter Lucy insisted that I take a holiday read with me. Whilst I ignored her advice, she nonetheless placed her suggestion in my carry-on luggage.