Sometimes I shelve my books by spine colour but otherwise at random. Here is a story from the books on my red shelf on 11 April, 2025. The first sentence is the first sentence of the first book, the second of the second, etc. I have only read two of these books.

I

am the ill-starred fruit of a hysterical pregnancy, and surprisingly, odd though I might be, I am not hysterical myself. Other questions belong to biography. He touched a bell on his desk and said to the secretary who answered it, “I will see him in ten minutes.”

I used to think that Mr. Seton Senior was a jerk, but now I’m wondering, What if he was—in principle—right? He would call us sometimes, the connection scratchy and echoing, a chorus of young women giggling in the background, his voice never sounding as happy as we expected it to. The furry atomy seemed shaken from inside with a spasmodic pleasure. His features were delicate, and nothing—deep-set eyes with long lashes, impeccably engineered nose, full lips—spoiled their harmony. And then he learned to play a horn—a trumpet, if there’s anybody here who doesn’t know what kind of horn a horn is—and that was his proper medium. Mindful he’d be paying, I asked if he’d like water—but while I was asking, he took the jug and poured.

From now on was the decline, the deterioration towards age, to come. He said, “Fill the book with nonsense.” Somebody else’s face. We left the café and walked in the sun, and I heard him mutter with his slight accent: “Goddamn spring.” I liked him; I believe he liked me.

One day, our fourth grade teacher, who here will be referred to as Sister Regina Vulcan, summoned each of us to the front of the class and asked what we would like to be when we grew up. So they would sit in the uncomfortable seat, listen to very little (preferring to savour the learned atmosphere of his study), learn nothing of the Carolingian Period and leave. Dark memories of his childhood—his mother’s misery, his father’s death.

The driver wiped his hands, carefully stripped the colonel of all his clothing, which he laid neatly in the boot of the car. I imagined our village as it had been and as it still was, the land on which I lay; and then the people, and the rapidly accelerating change or threat. “My wife has just taken a furnished cottage down here,” was the answer. The school records, though incomplete and haphazard, narrowed down who WILLIE 1954 had been.

The soldier’s wife was crossing the big marsh between Appleton and Goatwood, leaping from stone to stone with a pillow-slip of newly threshed cumin in her arms. However, so as not to infringe upon an almost universal rule and one which in any case I have no wish to dispute, I shall now indicate as concisely as I can certain features of my existence and, more particularly, the circumstances which prompted my voyage. But one does, partially at least. As for the dancers, they were young black men who seemed to be performing a very freely-improvised war-dance, each one dancing, as it were, for himself, without paying any attention to his companions. (With her free hand Nora pulled back her hair so he could see the baby entirely.) After a very few weeks he was proud of them, and proud of seeming to have earned their respect.

We sat in my front garden and she spat into a palette of mascara, the kind they made in the sixties, to mix a black paste with the tiny brush. Miss Vicks was not a superstitious person but like most people she was susceptible to flattery. He ate his sandwiches and soup together, sipping at the brown soup, and then biting at a sandwich. “It’s a raccoon,” Ángela said.

For us everything took its origin from that frightening and mysterious world. At the time, I wasn’t the least bit frightened or disgusted by them, but when we left that gloomy house—full of disjointed, mysterious spaces—and moved to the large house that was built for us, they clung so densely to the pale walls, and their flight was so silent, like a wet cotton drape flapping in an open window, that the very idea of them brushing against my cheek was enough for me to take a permanent dislike to them. Ears still droning from the baseball batting he gave the sides of the water bin, till guts hung out the rat’s mouth, the Nephew came down the caravan park. He threw his arms about her and planted a kiss somewhat wildly on her mouth. He has three grown-up sons besides. Notice how he was getting more and more sparing of words.

“Well—” she began, and then she clapped a hand over her mouth while everyone laughed. It was formerly infested, this court, by donkeys. The whole island was covered with a bright haze. He did not even want to look at all these cluttered images of his own past on the walls. Seizing the walking-stick beside him, he brought its pommel down hard on Angélique’s fingers as they grasped the window-sill.

1. I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett
2. The Hungry Eye by Walker Evans (introduction by John T. Hill)
3. The Singer Not the Song by Audrey Erskine Lindop
4. Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood
5. Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
6. Farewell Victoria by T. H. White
7. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
8. Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker
9. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
10. The Crazy Hunter by Kay Boyle
11. The Biggest Ever Tim Vine Joke Book by Tim Vine
12. Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor
13. Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti)
14. Heritage by Vita Sackville-West
15. Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler by Joe Queenan
16. Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love by Dan Rhodes
17. Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon
18. Reilly, Ace of Spies by Robin Bruce Lockhart
19. The Aerodrome: A Love Story by Rex Warner
20. The Matchmaker by Stella Gibbons
21. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
22. Witches’ Rings by Kerstin Ekman (translated by Linda Schenck)
23. W or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec (translated by David Bellos)
24. Real People by Alison Lurie
25. The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye (translated by James Kirkup)
26. Varieties of Exile by Mavis Gallant
27. Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates
28. Ways of Living by Gemma Seltzer
29. Duplex by Kathryn Davis
30. Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper by Donald Henderson
31. Nevada Days by Bernardo Atxaga (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)
32. The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
33. Notes from Childhood by Norah Lange (translated by Charlotte Whittle)
34. The Man Who Walks by Alan Warner
35. They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
36. Slapstick or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut
37. A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
38. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
39. The Gipsy in the Parlour by Margery Sharp
40. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (translated by Thomas Teal)
41. The Judges of the Secret Court by David Stacton
42. Angélique and the Sultan by Sergeanne Golon