Ever since childhood, I’ve loved reading at bedtime. Even in my teens (unlike my son, sadly), I read most nights, and in my career-driven twenty-somethings, I kept up the reading habit with short stories. Now middle-aged, I still love reading, though rather than one book, I have a pile of beside books!
I thought I’d share my current bedside pile (as of the end of June 2020) in this blog post. Some of the books I’m well into and others I’ve just started. So I didn’t think it would be fair to the authors to précis or review them.
Instead, I’ve borrowed from my @tallandtruebooks series on Instagram and posted the #bookcovers and #firstsentences from each book. For me, covers, like the ones in my bedside books, are what make readers pick up a book in a bookshop (or click on it online). But as I observed in a Writing Tips piece (on Tall And True), I find first sentences to be a fair judge of whether or not I’ll enjoy reading a book.
Another tip: click on a cover to learn more about the book or buy it on Amazon.com.au — doing so helps support my blog.
Pushing the Limits by Kurt Fearnley
Our Dogs, Ourselves by Alexandra Horowitz
How to be Australian by Ashley Kalagian Blunt
The Good, the Bad and the Unlikely by Mungo MacCallum
The Spill by Imbi Neemer
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
As I admitted in my Large Print Editions blog post, after ten to fifteen minutes of reading in bed, my eyes get a little tired, and sometimes (often) I wake to find the book resting on my face. And this is why, along with reading several books at a time, it takes me so long to finish a book.
But, I’m enjoying rotating through my current bedside books. And I hope to finish a few of them in July because I’ve got several more to-be-read piles waiting for me in my bookcase!
© 2020 Robert Fairhead
N.B. You might also like to read posts on my Year of Books from 2018 and Bedside Books from 2019.
Note: This post originally appeared on the Tall And True writers’ website.

About RobertFairhead.com
Welcome to the blog posts and selected writing of Robert Fairhead. Robert shares his writing on the Tall And True writers' website and writes and narrates episodes for the Tall And True Short Reads storytelling podcast. His book reviews and other writing have appeared in print and online media, and Robert has published several collections of short stories. Please see his profile page for further details.
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