I’ve embarked on a new book after finishing The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (I enjoyed it, but not as much as his most recent book The Sellout – you can view more of my worthless opinion here) I have chosen to restart Karl Ove Knausgaard’s A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1. It’s a meaty enough tome on its own, but being as it is the first title of six (the English translation of the final book The End is released on 30th August this year), it feels like quite the commitment I’m launching myself into. The whole thing apparently runs to 3,600 pages, of which I’ve clocked up 26 so far, so I’d better get my socks on if I’m to get to the end of book five before the release of book six, which is my outrageous plan at the moment. Gripping, right? Stay tuned!

It will probably help that Knausgaard himself is about as sexy and interesting as authors come, and I’ve already spent as much time reading and watching interviews with him as I have on his book. Like all of my good, healthy obsessions though, there’s a likelihood that my interest will wane slightly and something else will take over the space in my grey matter for a few weeks at some point, but we’ll see. I still routinely check online to see if Stewart Lee has generated anything new, and that obsession has lasted the best part of a decade.

Just look at the fucking state of this gorgeous man.

I’ve also received a book in the post by Jonathan Ames following the news that Richard Herring has confirmed him as a guest for his Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP). Herring is very enthusiastic about his writing so I thought I’d give him a go (the book I received is apparently one that Stewart Lee bought Richard Herring back in Christmas 2005, which is a nice thing to think about – for me anyway) I hadn’t read any of his stuff before but I knew after reading the first few pages that it was bang up my alley. Thankfully they are all small pieces that can be read in a teabreak, so the book doesn’t directly compete with Knausgaard’s, but it’s just like me to immediately find a way of procrastinating from something I voluntarily chose to do.

There’s just too much to watch, do and play isn’t there? I know people who don’t read or play video games, and they have it so easy compared to me. At a rough guess, I’ve got more than ten video games currently ‘on the go’, and I’ve probably got double that in television series’. I realised today that I haven’t watched Series Two of Toast of London – what kind of cunt am I? Add that to the pile of fun stuff to do then, shall I? All this and I’m supposed to be doing some sort of blog about fuck all to a daily deadline as well? Good luck with that, me.

Another short one as I cheat to catch up with these posts. But I’ve got a lot to be getting on with, clearly.