I Knew I Shouldn't Have Done It

I meant to be good and keep it for our camping trip to the Lakes in September but it was sat on the bookshelf tempting me.

I finished The High Places - Leaves From A Lakeland Notebook last week and needed to find a new book to start. A few weeks ago I picked up two books in Sainsbury's, one of which was Jeffery Archer's A Matter of Honour. Now as this is essentially a cold war, spy thriller story I knew it would be a page turner, as far as I was concerned. As far as possible I try to avoid reading these at home as it means reading into the early hours of the morning or ignoring everything else until I have finished it. Books like this are normally kept for camping trips where there will usually be a day where either it rains or we simply don't want to go walking, instead we have a lazy day around the site reading, drinking coffee and eating cake. On days like that it is perfectly possible for me to read one book from cover to cover and then start another in the evening.

High Places, whilst interesting wasn't what I would call a great read. It was OK for reading last thing at night, as each article was generally very short, but it was too disjointed for me. I enjoyed reading about the hills and lakes as I could visualize them as I read the book but it just didn't grab me. Properly explains why as a regular Guardian reader I'd never read the articles when they appeared in the paper. I only picked the book up because it was about the Lake District and I had heard others talking about Harry Griffin. I guess it's a case of curiosity satisfied but I won't be reading anything else by him.

After reading such a dry book I was keen to read something I knew I would enjoy. For two days I ignored the Jeffery Archer book but in the end it just had to be started. As I thought, it is turning into a real page turner and the bed-side light is still on in the early hours of the morning. It must be good because it is being picked up at every spare moment.

Oh dear, I don't think my house is going to get the good clean I had been promising myself I'd do once the gymnastics had finished. Well not until I've finished the book.