There was a time, about twenty years ago, when my reading prowess reached its peak. I could whip through a novel in a day. There was one holiday where I devoured twenty-four books in a fortnight (okay, most of them were short children’s books, but my holiday companions were all fairly impressed), and I was engaged and enthralled by all of them. No skim-reader, me.

But how times have changed. Writing takes up almost all of my spare time now. When I’m not working at the day job at Orion, I’m writing: on the train to work, my lunch break, the train home, the evenings and weekends. And then there’s real life: bits of housework and paying bills and all that crap. Oh, and a family! So I’ve found myself with very little time for reading. I tend to leave it till the end of the day, which I find is okay for non-fiction…