Reading has slowed down a bit as the preparations for Christmas have started but over all I’ve been reading quite a lot. I haven’t yet started the Young Writer books I took home from the event but once I’ve finished the book I’m currently reading it’ll be all systems go. Despite the looming award announcement date and the fact that before then there are a few things to be done, not least getting the decorations ready, I hope to have read a good amount of them, with ‘amount’ being the word rather than ‘number’ – I may well read a couple in tandem.

I also have Tony Peake’s North Facing still to read. I’m a bit late on the review for that one but I’m planning it for December.

At the moment I’m concentrating of J Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements; a good book if a bit too descriptive – lots of extraneous back story which explains why the book is over 500 pages. I have been wanting to read the author’s début, Maine, since its release date a few years ago but it’s proved difficult to find; the one and only time I found a copy it was very battered and whilst I did want to read it I didn’t want to pay full price. I liken the situation to that of Maile Meloy – they are likely different subjects and stories but the covers, at least in the US, are similar and both authors’ works are ridiculously difficult to find in Britain a month or so after publication. I do reckon I would prefer Maine but the one I’m reading is a fair enough substitute.

I’m holding off on the new Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen translation (Secret Passages In A Hillside Town) because a few pages in I recognised it as prime ‘certain mood/situation’ material. I very much want to read it and the few pages I read suggested it’ll be just as good as The Rabbit Back Literature Society but I want to be giving it all my attention.

I decided to start Mrs Dalloway but found it quite confusing; I’m not sure whether it’s a case of it being the wrong time or whether it needs longer or it’s just something that won’t work for me but as I was already reading it earlier than planned I’ve put it back on the December reading list. I was having trouble working out the time period and Clarissa’s age – had to resort to Wikipedia – and I knew carrying on at that point might make me uninterested. Perhaps it’s just not the right Woolf for me to be starting with.

Talking of a few pages, I’ve a mind to start ‘letting’ myself browse before committing to a read. I’ve always thought – at least in terms of my own reading – that reading a few pages to decide what to read next is unproductive, but I know it will help me to read the right book at the right time.

Something I can’t not talk about that isn’t book related – a couple of days ago I saw Roman Holiday for the first time. I’m going through an Audrey Hepburn film phase rather like my Marilyn Monroe phase a few years ago, and have got a box set of films. Well, I absolutely loved it and found it to be one of those media items that’s in a league of its own, akin to that idea that a book can be absolutely stellar but then there’s a category beyond that for which there are no words. I liked that the plot wasn’t bog standard and deviated a bit from the stereotypical royal-gets-away-and-or-meets-a-member-of-the-public theme and the ending was incredibly clever. Next up is a re-watch of Breakfast At Tiffanys; can’t wait, though in literal terms I’ll have to.

A question about Mrs Dalloway, then:

Does the story come into its own pretty quickly, and did you find yourself confused in the way I did? (If you can answer without spoilers, that’d be great.)

“To be paid to write novels is the single greatest privilege of my life”. — Claire North

Last week I and others got to meet four of the five shortlisted authors for the Young Writer of the Year Award. The writers read from their work and spoke about the past and future.

From left to right of this unfortunately bad photo: Sara Taylor (The Lauras), Julianne Pachico (The Lucky Ones), Claire North (The End Of The Day), and Minoo Dinshaw (Outlandish Knight). Chairing was Robert Collins, formally of The Sunday Times.

At the now-usual Groucho Club, we talked over wine and nibbles, various bloggers, including this year’s shadow judges, and publicists in attendance. The shadow judges are yet to meet up to decide on their winner but they’ve been in conversation about what they’re reading. I’m very much looking forward to hearing their decision, which will be announced next Wednesday.

For The Lauras, Sara Taylor wrote both Alex and Ma’s stories at the same time. Alex was a gender in themselves, they were just ‘Alex’ to her. She started writing the book in 2012, before gender was a topic of discussion in the US and was writing it at the time she realised she’d be remaining in the UK. She wanted her book to speak back to Maureen Duffy’s Love Child.

Julianne found having only one setting too hard. She wrote her short stories and then saw the connections between them. The US publishers market it as a novel.

Claire North (Kat)’s parents were concerned about her having a ‘real job’, writing wasn’t seen as a career but she said they are proud. The author was first published at 14 and, now at 30, has written over a dozen books under three different names.

Minoo Dinshaw said that writing is the only thing he’s good at. He would like to try his hand at fiction in the future. He said that writing is a way of doing everything and being anyone, a thought that was agreed with by all.

I brought back with me the books I’ve not yet read and will be reviewing them in due course, hopefully before the award ceremony date (7th December) – it should be do-able in every case except, perhaps, Dinshaw’s book which is over 600 pages. Having only read one of the shortlist I can’t say I’ve a favourite yet, and judging by what we heard that may be difficult!

Yesterday was a particularly strong example of a reading phenomenon that I don’t think has a name.

At some point in the last two years, I bought Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and a little while later I attempted to read it. I want to say that these events happened in the last year – it feels like that’s the situation and it would make yesterday’s reading more interesting – but I have the hardback which was published in March 2016, so it can’t have been much longer than that date.

On trying to read the book I found I couldn’t get into it. I remember thinking the writing was lovely, but that it was too heavy a subject and needed a lot of attention. I considered what I’d surely considered before I’d bought it, that Boy, Snow, Bird had proved to be nice but a bit of a mess, and that buying the new book had been a bit of a silly idea.

I left it and left it and didn’t really have even a vague notion of returning it to for a very long time.

Well, in comes yesterday, I was wanting to read something on my shelves and as I was heading over to the books I received last Christmas that I still haven’t read, my eyes fell on the Oyeyemi and I thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t expect much.

It’s now Monday morning and it’s off the currently reading list already. I started it just before lunchtime and spent the rest of the day reading. I absolutely loved it; it was everything I look for in a book. Granted it was completely bizarre and didn’t always make complete sense, but those two things were more a positive feature than a drawback.

Being in the right mood to read a book is often discussed. So too is timing. And I think both of those ideas may have applied to me, but usually you get a sense that you’re reading the wrong book. That first time with the Oyeyemi felt, on the face of it, perfect, but, particularly in yesterday’s case, as I read the pages I’d read before it seemed to be a completely different book.

Perhaps it was because I was wary then, of reading another Oyeyemi, whereas since that time I’ve read interviews with her and have come to understand that the bizarre is a long-used feature. Maybe this time because I was resigned to the idea that I might end up shelving it again – I went in with the thought to take a quick peek and certainly didn’t envisage spending the rest of my day on it – it worked for me. I don’t know. But I think I should pay more attention than I do to that feeling of it being the wrong mood, wrong time, even when I’m otherwise raring to go.

Interestingly this doesn’t tend to happen with review copies. It does sometimes but generally not. Perhaps in those cases I’ve spent long enough beforehand contemplating them.

What books have you put aside with indifference only to return later and love them to pieces?

On a not too cold day recently, I took a trip to Farley Mount, the highest point in Hampshire.

The highest point in Hampshire it may be but thankfully it’s not too high. The path leading to is very rutted in a way that suggests the heavy use of wheels at some point – it’s too narrow for cars – but compared to many paths to viewpoints it’s incredibly short and a lot easier, particularly when the ground is dry. This is your reward for 15 minutes walk:

The views are 360 degrees or thereabouts – there are some trees – and stretch from Romsey to Winchester and beyond in both directions. I took quite a few photographs of the folly, the sun in the right place for my camera’s small sensor to produce good colours.

Inside, a plaque gives an idea as to the history of the place:

Underneath lies buried a horse. The property of Paulet St John Esq. that in the month of September 1733 leaped into a chalk pit twentyfive feet deep a foxhunting with his master on his back. And in October 1734 he won the hunters plate on worthy downs and was rode by his owner and entered in the name of “Beware Chalk Pit”.

The above being the words of the original inscription were restored by the Rt Hon. Sir William Heathcote Baronet Sep. AD 1870.

Outside the wind was biting, and a black cloud loomed overhead; with leaves coating the way back I didn’t want to spend too much time gazing out over the fields but it’s a place that visiting for a handful of minutes doesn’t feel a waste. Next time, though, I’ll remember to take a hat.

It’s become one of the highlights of the year: earlier this week, the shortlist for the Young Writer of the Year Award (The Sunday Times/Peters Dunlop Fraser) was announced. This time they’ve chosen 5 titles rather than 4:

• Minoo Dinshaw: Outlandish Knight
• Claire North: The End Of Day
• Julianne Pachico: The Lucky Ones
• Sally Rooney: Conversations With Friends
• Sara Taylor: The Lauras

I read The Lauras last year and am very happy to see it on the list. Taylor was previously in the running for 2015’s award for The Shore and whilst it would be impossible to argue about the winner that year (Sarah Howe for Loop Of Jade) Taylor’s book was of a very high standard. Her latest is even better, a phenomenal book, and I hope it does well.

This year’s judges are Sunday Times Literary Editor Andrew Holgate, and writers Elif Shafak and Lucy Hughes-Hallett. Shafak said:

“Our wonderful shortlist celebrates the depth and breadth of literature today, reflecting a striking diversity of styles, interests, genres and backgrounds. True, only one of these authors will win the prize in the end, but each of the five shortlisted books has already won our hearts, and we are confident that they will similarly win the hearts of readers worldwide.”

And this year’s shadow panel? Annabel Gaskell (Annabookbel), Dane Cobain (Social Bookshelves), Eleanor Franzen (Elle Thinks), Rebecca Foster (Bookish Beck), and Clare Rowland (A Little Blog Of Books). Congratulations to them all; it is an awesome job to have.

There can only be one question: have you read any of the shortlisted books?