It’s ridiculous, but I get a bit anxious when people ask me what I’m reading. It feels like a test that I am destined to fail. I marvel at friends and acquaintances who seem to consume fat, serious books almost as often as I eat breakfast. When do they find the time, I wonder? I obviously waste my life watching too much TV and walking the dog. It leaves me feeling morally inadequate.

I feel like I should have more structure and system to my reading; that I should be across recent releases by big name novelists, engaged with important new works of social and cultural criticism, and at least have some passing familiarity with popular science—the sort of books that tell you how your brain re-builds itself or why big data is going to shape the future. And it goes without saying that my current reading should be building on a solid appreciation of great works of the past: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Melville, Woolf etc. etc.