Skipping

Watching Florida Man (still into it) sent me back to James W Hall's Bones of Coral (Knopf), a first ed copy of which I picked up in a sale for a few dollars in July 1994. (I date books when I read them – my bookcase is as close as I get to keeping a diary.) I remember it as a good novel; the later ones in the series not so much. After that gets a spin it's probably back to revisit Elmore Leonard – Maximum Bob and Get Shorty in particular. Visual cues are reading cues.

The days of browsing a bookstore and discovering something not-quite-famous feel like they're a long way off. More than half the books on my shelves I found by accident: drifting through the shop, thumbing the first and middle pages and thinking OK, I'll give this a go. I guess most people buy books now based on recommendations or reviews. But I miss the happy accident of experiencing a story before anyone has told me what to think about it or how the author's work should be approached.