I’m not a very focused reader. Even with the writers closest to my heart, I’ve usually only read a few of their books. I figure I’ll get to the rest gradually, one each year or so, and spread them out across my life. The way I see it, there are so many books that I’ll never get to read before I die, so I might as well try to sample a bit of everything.

In his ‘Art of Fiction’ interview in The Paris Review, Kenzaburo Oe outlines a much more systematic approach to reading: