I have loads of books to read...

... and I have just ordered a load more. These are my birthday books that I have allowed myself because it was my birthday. I have a lot of guilt about the dead trees stacked around my house but books are probably my deepest and oldest vice. Nothing fancy. Nothing hugely academic. Variety is the spice and all that.

The thing about books is that they are such simple devices for delivering so much information. Film throws coloured lights on to a screen. Books throw coloured ideas on to your imagination.

Books can be objects of beauty or they can be a thumbed wad you stuff in your pocket. And the value for money of a book, in terms of the quantity of new ideas it pours into your mind, is not really bettered by any other medium. So buying new books when you have got more than you can read already is not such a bad thing...