I have made a pact to rationalise my reading habits. It came from being barely able to lift my ruck-sack when leaving work the other night (that’s a wild exaggeration) and wondering why it was so heavy. Looking through it to sort out the things I could leave on my desk until the next day, I realised it was all the magazines and books I’m reading at the moment. So, some thinning-out is called for.

First to go will be Metro.

I pick it up every morning and read pretty much all of it, but only out of habit. As soon as I get to work the first thing I do is check the BBC site for updates and I have a feed-reader running so I don’t really need a rag full of recycled press releases.

The rest of it will be difficult to thin out, though. I generally read PC Pro and Computer Buyer every month, and will continue to do so, as well as The Week most weeks.

The Week, almost always a resident of my bag, summarises the world’s media on a weekly basis (perhaps not surprisingly) so is a good way of checking out what’s being said overseas about stories that have made it into the news over here.

Wired, I consider to be required reading, on account of the fact I can’t work out who it’s aimed at just as much as I like the writing style. Sometimes I think it’s a computing magazine, sometimes politics, often science, sometimes social commentary… I’m not sure why it works, or how it manages to sell in so many countries, but it seems to have tapped into a vein nobody else has spotted, and apparently I’m somewhere in that vein. Once I work out what Wired is about, I’ll probably work out a lot of stuff about myself.

There are two reasons for reading Mens Fitness, one of which is an interest in staying fit (and reading interesting snippets on how to sew your own wounds or kick down a locked door). The other is easily guessable from the cover design.

The Spectator is a now-and-then mag for me. A bit too right-wing, but then it helps to keep an eye on what the opposition is talking about now and then. Besides, the book and film reviews are good and you can learn a lot from the way it is written. It’s way too text heavy to buy on a regular basis, though, so it can go the way of Metro.

So, of the four magazines currently in my bag, The Week, Mens Fitness and Wired remain.

Also in there are two books: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Yoga for People who Can’t be Bothered to Do It.

In spite of the glowing praise on the back cover, Roger Ackroyd it turning out to be very pedestrian and hum-drum. As such, I’m sure I’ll be missing all the clues as to who dunnit. Poirot peaked with Murder on the Orient Express, I think, although that may have been as much to do with the fact that I read it in one sitting on a long train journey. I started it as I pulled out of Cologne station and finished it five miles from home, having passed through Germany, Belgium, France, the tunnel and the UK.

I suspect the surroundings may therefore have had more to do with how much I enjoyed it than the story-line itself, as it was highly implausible.

Yoga for People who can’t be Bothered to Do It is turning out to be far more interesting. I’ve not read enough of it yet to have formed a good impression of how it’s going to pan out, but the writing style is wonderfully fluid and it just carries you along. It’s pretty much how I’d hope my novel turns out when I get around to finishing it off.

It’s only just struck me that I should probably swap these with my bedside reading matter as they’re far more throw-away and forgetful than what I’m reading before I go to sleep: the Rhyming History of Britain, and The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman.

The Rhyming History is a fantastic piece of work - the history of the country from 55BC to 1966 written as a poem. I wish I’d thought of doing that. You do have to concentrate on it, though, or else you find yourself losing track of the rhythm and then you can’t follow what’s going on, but if you pay it proper attention it repays you several times over.

The Political Animal, of which I’ve so far only read the first 50 or so pages, is turning out to be a very well-researched piece of journalism looking at the type of person who wants to run for Parliament. Full of interesting snippets along the lines of:

…there were fifty-one Prime Ministers from Sir Robert Walpole to Tony Blair… twenty-four - almost half of the total number - had lost their fathers before they reached the age of twenty-one…

So, some sustained effort is required to clear the reading backlog so I can get on to those sitting on the bookshelf beside me as I type. Perhaps some time off, a beach and nothing else to do is called for…

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