Summer Reading

by Matt Lynn

I'm off to Cornwall at the weekend with the kids, so I need to choose a few books for what I hope will be a relaxing week. I've already got a copy of Hunted by fellow Curzon-ite Emlyn Rees, The Big Short by Michael Lewis, who I know a bit from our work on Bloomberg, and American Pastoral by Philip Roth, who I have got back into since attending the Man Booker Prize dinner a few weeks ago in his honour. That seems like a pretty good range - some light fun, some art, and some serious stuff.

Hopefully a fair number of people will be taking 'Shadow Force' with them on holiday. I think of my own books as summer reading. But what makes a great story for the beach?

I think it needs a number of qualities. It needs a rattling good story that grips you from start to finish. It needs some jokes - no one wants to be too downbeat on holiday. It needs some escapism - a holiday is all about getting away from things, and we want a book that does that as well. But it also needs to tell you something serious, and educate you in some way, because a holiday is one of the few chances we have to fill gaps in our knowledge.

I try and touch all those bases in my own work. And I always keep in mind that that is the recipe for a great holiday read.

A Writer on Holiday

Like my book, I've been on the move again. This week my travels had nothing to do with books, research, signings, sort of promotion, or anything at all to do with books. We were paying some Christmas visits to family and friends. But, as Ionesco said, 'A writer never has a vacation. for a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.' So I took my notebook, and a supply of pens, and wrote two more chapters of my third book while I was away. Once a writer...
(By the way, I've no idea where CUT SHORT was going in this photo. A reader sent it to me.)
Leigh Russell