I know exactly what I want to read this summer — if only I could find it

What I thought I’d do this summer holidays is catch up with all those classics I’ve been meaning to read for ages: A la recherche du temps perdu, Moby-Dick, David Copperfield, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Vanity Fair, everything by the Brontës, anything German, Metamorphosis, the Odyssey, the Iliad, most Balzac, anything by P.G. Wodehouse, Our Mutual Friend, Anna Karenina…

But where to start? Our Mutual Friend is out because the wife is reading it and it’s surely a waste to buy two copies. Also, Dickens generally is very Dickensian and I’m not sure how much of that I can cope with on holiday. The Brontës, I think, are more a girl thing than a boy thing. I’ve seen Vanity Fair on TV. Moby-Dick’s one of those books you need to read in the right circumstances — on a whaling holiday, something like that. The Odyssey and the Iliad you kind of don’t need to read because a bit like the Bible — which I also haven’t read — you know the key stories anyway. The Proust I’ve tried and I think I’m more of a War and Peace kind of person. Kafka, Schmafka. Germans? You don’t really need to read the Germans, do you? Balzac’s possible — I enjoyed Père Goriot — but I don’t know which others are any good. P.G. Wodehouse I’m sure would be fun, but then I’d no longer be able to shock Wodehouse fans by telling them I’ve never read any Wodehouse.

Which leaves either Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, except I’m pretty sure they both die at the end so isn’t that going to spoil it slightly? The whole way through the books — really thick, commitment-requiring books at that — you’ll be saying to yourself: ‘Yeah, but it’s all going to end horribly, so what’s the point?’