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A couple of weeks ago I mentioned I was reading a Big Book. If you join in my weekly Weekend Reads threads on Substack Chat, you know the big book because I was still reading it three weekends later. I finished it and I’m ready to tell you about it, because it’s Not My Sort of Thing, and yet I’ve read all 625 pages of it, even though it’s a genre I rarely touch. I’m even sort of mystified about why I ended up buying it, in hardback, in the week it was released, no less. Was I hypnotised by an advertising campaign that I don’t even remember seeing? Have I been glamoured by a book?? Even stranger, I’ve read it within a couple of months of buying it, instead of letting it haunt my home for years the way I usually do with big books that I really want to read but can’t quite manage to pick up – hello to The Luminaries, and Night Film, my constant companions – as yet unread, any year now!