Is it even possible to to have a favourite unread author?  I hope so, because I have a current favourite amongst all the authors whose books I have never read. In fact I will probably read a couple of his books now, once I have cleared the growing pile of books I already have in the queue.

The only reason I haven’t read any of his books was because I thought he only wrote childrens books and as a rule I don’t read childrens books unless they feature Sherlock Holmes.  I tried Harry Potter when the first one came out but found it impossible to read and was glad when Stephen Fry came along to read it to Charlie – on cassette of course.

Anyway, the author in question is Matt Whyman, who is fairly local.  I met him during the election campaign last year and he seemed like a decent sort. On its own that is not enough of a reason to jump to the top of my personal unread authors chart, though I am shallow enough for that to be enough to get into at least the top ten. What has happened to cause the leap to the top is that he has now written a couple of books that look like ones I would want to read.

The first is a non-fiction book called Oink! My Life With Minipigs.  A part of it was included in the Daily Mail today, and I really enjoyed reading it.  It isn’t really my sort of subject matter, but I enjoyed the writing style, which is deceptively simple but drily amusing.  The pigs didn’t look very ‘mini’ in the pictures, but I expect that will feature somewhere in the book.  It will be interesting to compare his experiences with those of Jo when she started keeping pigs.  [[Very different I expect.  For a start I don't get the impression that the Whymans will be filling their freezers with pig once they reach a certain age]]

The other book is called Tooth and Claw under the nom de plume of Lazlo Strangolov, which is out tomorrow. This is a childrens book (or young adult/teen fiction or something like that) and it doesn’t feature Sherlock Holmes at all as far as I can see, so what is the appeal?

Well for a start it features a zombie beagle. I think my fondness for zombie themes is fairly well documented by now. Not only that, but the zombie beagle in question is called Scud, which appeals to me for obvious reasons. From the brief descriptions it sounds like it could have the tone of a sort of junior Psychoville/League of Gentlemen. But as far as I am concerned he had me at ‘zombie beagle’.

When I have got to the end of Stewart Lee’s book I still have a 700-page history book, a couple of novels, a couple of audiobooks, an MS Office training DVD and a French language course to get through, but after that I think I shall delve into the world of micropigs and zombie beagles for a bit.