Over the three books, I have dropped in on Bascombe’s life in his thirties, forties and fifties. Each book covers a few days – around Easter in the first book, Independence Day weekend in the second (obviously), and Thanksgiving in the last.

The books, taken as a whole, are far more than snapshots of a man. They are an incredibly rich and human take on the interior life. Bascombe may not be the ‘everyman’ we might wish him to be, and Ford suggests he is not that, but he still a wonderful conduit for exploring just what goes on inside our heads.

Meditative might not be the right term, but these books are built around the wonder and absurdity of the everyday, seen through the interior dialogue we all have. We each encounter drama every day, just on a very human scale. And we work through it in our heads. Well, at least I do. My interior dialogue rarely shuts up. Maybe that is why I liked Bascombe so much.

Bascombe does not live an extraordinary life. He is divorced with two children, and for most of the books is a realtor. Yet, like us all, Bascombe has passions, fears and hopes.

And I really haven’t wanted to leave his headspace as he ruminates over what life means as we get older, and how we can cope with whatever life throws our way.

Upon reading the final page I felt a real wave of emotion. Sadness, at bidding goodbye to a good friend. And happiness at having encountered such a character. I think I enjoyed The Lay of the Land the most, as by that point I had totally engaged with the character, and would happily have read 500 pages of him discussing anything. Which is pretty much what the book does, avoiding a normal plot. I could have read it forever.

Once I finally let myself finish the book, I had to pick up another book right away, to avoid some sort of readerly paralysis. After savouring each word, of getting so attached to one character, how could another book compete? At least with the first two I had another Bascombe book to look forward to. This time, I had to just get reading, to stop those thoughts leaving me book-less.

I wish I had it in me to come up with some sort of cogent and coherent argument about why I loved the Bascombe books so. Yet, I’m not sure I want to pick at the stitching and see how Ford did it. Not yet anyway. I just want to be happy that I let these books into my life.

So, do ever not want a book to end? How do you cope? And what is your take on Richard Ford?

Oh, and apologies for the gushing nature of this post. And my incredibly sporadic blogging schedule. I’ll work on it (the schedule, if not the gushing).

However, book tokens do present one challenge. In this age of internet shopping where virtually everything is online and cheaper, there are far fewer bookshops to go to, to actually spend the tokens.

I am by no means a militant buyer of books. In my eyes, Waterstones is by no means as evil as some critics make out. While they are, of course, a massive chain with huge purchasing power, there are still plenty of branches that bear the hallmark of a good manager.

Still, ideally, I like to try to support the independent booksellers that do remain. And so, I endeavoured to find a suitable location for my purchasing.

I got incredibly lucky. After a bit of an internet search, I chanced upon a likely candidate. The London Review of Books Bookshop in Bloomsbury turned out to be something of a revelation. Immediately, upon opening the door, it appealed to the book fetishist in me, with the heady scent of new books, and the vision of shelf upon shelf stacked with books on every conceivable subject.

It was a perfect example of the advantage independent booksellers can have over the internet, as a visitor is able to discover new books they never realised existed, or perhaps books they had forgotten about, or thought were out of print. Amazon does a pretty good job of guiding its customers, but there is no substitute for the joy and sheer usefulness of actually browsing a good bookshop.

I made something of a whistle-stop tour, and so will have to make time for a proper visit soon, especially as it has it own cake shop attached, which I’m sure is a fine place to review any new purchases. Plus, I like cake.

I may have to get my finances in check (or get more book tokens) first, as it could be an expensive return. In a short visit I picked up three books, and could have easily picked more, as everywhere I turned I saw another interesting (and often new to me) volume. It’s just one of those shops.

Image by rvacapinta via Flickr.

Or maybe it is just a phase. I do always read. A lot. But the medium isn’t always the same. Sometimes I just have to read a newspaper every day. Other times I realise I get most of my news online (although it’s not the same), or find my brain rotting from reading the free newspapers handed out in London and decide enough is enough.

Other times I’m all over magazines and, for want of a better word, journals. There is some fantastic magazine design out there – Wire magazine, in particular, and the late, lamented Plan B. There’s also some genuinely great writing hiding away in your old periodicals. The New Yorker is always a wonderful, informative and luxurious read. The New York Review of Books is similarly brain-nourishing. But it’s not all about mags from the Big Apple – how about When Saturday Comes and World Soccer, for pretty much peerless football coverage? Or Private Eye, still great after all these years?

But then, after a while, I realise that as immediate and bite-sized and shiny as magazines are, it is a good book that I really crave. A book that demands to be read, to be devoured. The sort of book that leaves you with a sense of loss when it’s over, because you just can’t read it anymore, that the story of those characters (real or imagined) has now finished.

And in an age of iPhones, iPads and all that jazz, and working in a role that falls directly under the banner of, ahem, ‘new media’, it’s interesting to me that all of this ‘old media’ still brings so much joy. These print formats are still vital to me. There is nothing quite like the feel, touch, smell, experience of books, magazines and newspapers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love computers and would be lost without the internet. But nothing will replace flicking through a newspaper in a pub, or a magazine in the garden on a sunny day, or an old book, curled up indoors on a winter’s night. Long may these simple pleasures last.

Image from Jasoon via Flickr