Summer fiction

Each year as the weather warms, my brain cells atrophy and go all teenage girly. In the autumn, the grey matter rehydrates and becomes more discerning. But those summer months of utter non-intellectuality are to be enjoyed, because that is when the bad fiction gets stacked by the bedside and devoured in steaming heaps. There is always a two-inch thick bonkbuster special or chicklit surprise on the kitchen table or by the bog to be munched through in 'spare' moments. Picking through the Oxfam book stock becomes a fortnightly addiction, and the local market provides 3 for £2 if you have time to browse between securing the week's cheese and veg supply and haring back to the desk.
It often starts with a re-read of a Jilly Cooper, although this year's temptation was freshly printed and bought cheap cheap at Paddington station. At the moment I am chewing through (why? shoot me now with a stone-age weapon, she is dire) Jean M Auel's Earth Children series. There is a heap of Georgette Heyers (first time for me) that I failed to wade through in adolescence. I do have some limited standards though. Jean Plaidy, Danielle Steel, Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer (arggghhh!) and Terry Pratchett are permanently OUT. The distinctly classier Barbara Pym, Paul Auster and Philip Roth do rub shoulders with my current trashy stuff.
Many years ago, at a house warming party, the woman I showed round first gasped at the Jilly Coopers piled next to the complete, unmatching sets of James Joyce and Henry James. She spent the next hour commenting on and showing other people my apparently bizarre (and I must admit alphabetized) book collection. What she saw was my summer stock put to bed with the rest of the library - and at what I think is over 3000 books, I suspect it is becoming something of a mini library. My catholic reading is something I see reflected on friends' bookshelves. The more rigorously informally educated they are the more eclectic their collections and the more I want to prise their gems out of the vertical. In my head I am a book snob. In my heart I am a book slut.