March has been an incredibly busy month for me. Amongst regular parties and travelling home for a Mother’s Day visit, I’ve moved jobs. Settling into the new routine has been challenging, and it’s been a bit difficult to keep up the reading. Also, if I’m really honest with myself, I’ve just upgraded my phone and I’ve lost a lot of time playing Pokemon GO. As I write this, I am one book behind going into April, but hey I’m Level 21 in the game. I’m confident I will catch up – more on that below.

What’s been interesting, especially after reading the eponymous essay in Books v. Cigarettes, is that this 52 Books project has been met with universal curiosity and enthusiasm. People will always ask me questions about my book, and people will often want to talk to me about what they are reading, or tell me that they wish they could find more time for reading. It’s been so good to see such eager interest about the concept of reading in general. In Orwell’s essay, he predicts and laments the slow death of print media; at least it hasn’t happened yet.

BOOK ELEVEN – Poetics by Aristotle

This was this month’s “I’ve Always Wanted To Read” entry. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I can’t deny that it was pretty hard going. I might have guessed had I given it any thought at all, but didn’t know going in that Poetics is a) incomplete and obscure and that b) this is because it is a collection of lecture notes, and not written to be published. I finished the book a little unsatisfied.

The edition that I read (Penguin Classics, 1996) has a long and incredibly thorough introduction by Malcolm Heath, that helps illuminate some of the confusions and obscurities. There are also a wealth of endnotes, to both the introduction and the text itself, that had me erratically jumping around the pages. I needed two bookmarks and a finger to keep my places correct, and I feel it would have been easier if all the notes had been grouped together, or if they had been printed as footnotes instead.

There is no denying that Aristotle was a great writer, and Poetics has been studied for centuries, but in the end I think this is one best left for the student, and not the casual reader.

BOOK TWELVE – Books v. Cigarettes by George Orwell

Sticking with Penguin, this collection of articles and essays is part of Penguin’s Great Ideas Series, which I have only just discovered thanks to a beautiful display in Waterstones Trafalgar Square. It’s not something I’ve gone into so far with this blog, but it’s worth noting that the covers for the Great Ideas Series are gorgeous.

The opening essay, “Books v. Cigarettes”, is a response to Orwell being told that his friend has “no interest in literature” because “books cost too much”. The frank economic analysis Orwell undertakes to disprove this idea had me giggling on the tube, and with a little editing, it could easily read like a contemporary comic monologue.

While this collection reminded me how funny Orwell’s writing can be, “The Prevention of Literature”, an acerbic lambasting of the death of journalism, and “My Country, Right or Left”, which calls for a communist revolution in Britain, made me wonder what Orwell would think of current affairs – what would appal him, and what would be a pleasant surprise?

It’s worth remembering that Orwell was a writer who could cut to the heart of humanity and a poet who was obsessed with the power of language, and that latter is what the word “Orwellian” should mean. Almost every essay had a moment that made me think “Oh, yeah, this is definitely the guy who wrote 1984.” Every article was from before 1984 was published, but every one signposted it.

BOOK THIRTEEN – The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This is the only conventional novel I read this month. I was convinced to read it after being told that the 2012 film was a “masterclass in adaptation”, so I put it on my pile in advance of a comparative study. After having read it, I feel like that attitude was doing the book a disservice.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is Chbosky’s first novel, and is a coming-of-age story set in such classic high-school terms that it might look pedestrian on the shelf, but this belies its depth and artistry. The story is told through the letters of “Charlie” to an unknown recipient (at least I think they’re unknown. If the reader is supposed to figure it out, I didn’t manage to) and chronicles the year that he starts high school. The characters are well crafted – there is enough detail to make you believe each character is complex, but when you think about it, you don’t end up knowing much about anyone. This links the reader closely with Charlie, even when he behaves in an otherwise alienating way. The last two letters make you realise that Charlie didn’t even know his own story, let alone anyone else’s, and they pack a real emotional punch.

I am yet to watch the movie, but I’d be surprised if it was as good.

BOOK FOURTEEN – The Specialist by Charles ‘Chic’ Sale

I mentioned at the top that I was struggling to keep up with the reading this month. I was talking to my father about the project while I was reading Books v. Cigarettes, and laughing he implied that the collection shouldn’t count towards the 52 Books because it was too slim. I replied somewhat defensively that it was pages with text and bound like a book, so it was a book. He soon returned to me with The Specialist, saying with a mischievous grin that it should help me to catch up.

The Specialist is a comedy monologue by American Vaudeville comic Chic Sale, who only published it in book form to stop people from stealing it. It became a bestseller and has had 26 editions. It is, at a guess, 3000 words long. Thanks, Dad.

The copy my father gave to me is inscribed “Joan B. Howarth. October 1940.” I haven’t looked her up, but it is worth noting that Chic Sale initially refused to perform the monologue in front of women because The Specialist is about a carpenter who specialises in building privies. Ironically, there is very little toilet humour in it – it was the ’20s after all. It is pretty funny, but almost all the jokes come from the depiction of the passion of the expert. I expect it’s even funnier to see live, but even in the text it’s easy to read the modulation of Sale’s performance. Sadly, there’s no record of it, but it’s easy to find other people reading it on YouTube.