I like cold pizza. I know people, strange, weird people who may have come here from outer space, who don’t like cold pizza. On the other hand, I don’t like cold Chinese food, but I know people who do and they really must be from planet Zoiks! because that’s just too much. Way too much.
Once upon a time my wife didn’t know what a saveloy* is, though she does now. And, yes, she is one hundred percent weird; she must be to have married me.
Some people like eating garlic. Yuck! And others swear blind that courgettes actually taste yummy. Surely, they’re from the distant galaxy NoTasteBuds?
There are people who are happily tucked up in bed by nine every evening, insisting they can’t keep their eyes open another minute. Then there are people like me who wonder why anyone feels the need to go to bed before two in the morning.
I hear persistent rumours that there are people who like going to musicals, whereas I once largely slept through a screening of Evita.
Apparently, there are also readers who don’t like my favourite books, despite it being an irrefutable matter of fact, in my own head, that I have the best taste when it comes to reading.
In a similar vein, I have actually met people, real flesh and blood human beings, who insist that some books I hate with a passion are, in fact, the greatest read ever. Now that is weird to the extent that I must conclude they are winding me up.
Weird, isn’t it, how all these situations can arise?
Well, no, of course it isn’t anything of the sort. The truth is that we, as readers, just as we do with anything else in our lives, have our own preferences. Our own likes and dislikes. Our own passions. Our own lines not to be crossed.
After all, readers, we’re all just weirdos really and thank heavens for that, because wouldn’t life be boring otherwise?
All the best,
Ben
(*)Thinking to yourself, saveloy, what the heck is that? Then anguish over this strange item of food no more by reading up on it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saveloy
The House of Spies, a high stakes game of espionage in the best traditions of The Thirty-Nine Steps.
