When we first married, Peter had no  time for novels. His favourite books were on the subject of  Bomber Command and the part it played in World War 11.  Other 'specialist subjects' included the internal combustion engine, diesel engines and the circulation of the blood. Like Mr Gradgrind in Hard Times, facts were the thing,  not made-up stories.

(Professional quizzers, apparently, memorise  the titles and the authors of books, but have little idea of the subject matter. Emma Bovary is reduced to being no more than a bored wife, rather than Flaubert's masterpiece and the novel Moby Dick can be explained as a man  obsessed with killing a whale.)  

The art of the writer is to entertain and there is no reason to feel guilty about reading for pleasure.  When Peter discovered P. G. Woodhouse, One Moonlit Night and Scott Fitzgerald the literary landscape changed for him. 

Although I'm always reading something, my range is fairly narrow. Two books I have failed to read are  Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Tolkien's The  Hobbit, but  thousands of others have enjoyed them (and there are thousands of other books I would find unreadable).

During the first year of my marriage  I spent  many hours in the local library.  We lived in a very small, remote town in West Wales. Imagine a place that has a train service,  surprisingly, but no passenger trains on a Sunday. If you need safety pins the only place to buy them is in  the chemist's shop.  People come to this town to retire, open sweet shops, go for walks. Ambitious young people have all long fled.

We started our married life in this town. I had hoped, before arriving, to find a job here. Little did I know that there were virtually no jobs to be had.  It took me a year to find employment.  Consequently, I sat down and read and read. 

If you have a story to tell you should write, but don't write just because you want to tell a story. Not my words.  I shall blog tomorrow and I'm not sure if it's because I want to write or if it's because I have a tale.