Excessively narrow reading is unhelpful, certainly. Reading only Serious Literature is no better than reading only trash in this respect.

I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.

Though my appetite for food grew frail, my hunger for books was constant.

As one tends to the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so, for it must be very lonely being dead.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.