A story about "The Book of Dave: A Novel" — 29 weeks ago
I bought this book last year at the Cheltenham Literature festival after hearing Will give a lecture/reading- he was an absolutely amazing speaker, and I think pretty much everyone in the audience felt a desperate need to buy his book afterwards (he was actually one of the speakers I had no particular opinion on and ended up being the best of the weekend, sadly the person I most looked forward to (Vic Reeves) was incredibly dry and very, very dull- shows that we should always try new things, even if we’re not sure we’ll like them, eh?)
Afterwards I went up to get my book signed and had a gloriously long chat with Will and he signed my book with this great big long personal epithet, an entire paragraph which still makes me feel all swimmy when I read it.
Unfortunately, almost exactly a year later I’ve still only read the first 50/100 pages. Sad, really- I can still hear the voices he used for all the characters when he was reading (honestly, it was awesome, his voice for Runty at the beginning- pure gold.), but I just never got into it. I still intend to read it, and I will, someday, there’s been many a day when, gazing over my bookshelf for something I HAVEN’T read a thousand times, my eyes graze the cover of this book, but I think it’s something I’m just going to need to feel a stab of inspiration to read.
I’ll probably end up packing it in a suitcase one day when I know I’m going on a particularly lazy holiday, which is shockingly bad behaviour towards any book, but perhaps the only way I will be able to get into it. (and I do want to.)
