More power to Mark Billingham’s book-hurling elbow. I might join in | Rebecca Nicholson
Do you ditch a book if it does not immediately grab your attention or do you trudge through it joylessly, weighed down by some invisible obligation to complete it, no matter how arduous the task? The writer Mark Billingham got stuck into this endless debate at the Cheltenham literature festival last week, admitting that he gives up on five out of 10 books that he starts, because life's too short" and there are so many great books out there". If genre fiction, in particular, doesn't grab you after 20 pages, he said, then, for God's sake, throw it across the room angrily".
The thought of it! It is so bold, so cavalier. There are two books in particular that I went on to adore, after several abandoned attempts to read them. It quite literally took me years to get into both Wolf Hall and The Luminaries and it was only a combination of very lazy, pool-based holidays and dogged perseverance that finally got me to stick with them. I am very glad I did. They rewarded patience and in a culture of instant gratification this seems increasingly rare.
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