I have actually been quite good at hoovering up some of the long-standing members of my bookshelf. Over the last couple of years I have tried to make sure I read some things that have been shelf residents for a while. So, for example recently I have read Schindler’s Ark, Day of the Triffids, Ark Baby, The Pianist, Half a Yellow Sun, all of which had been hanging around for a while.

However, it really is a list that never ends. I almost never buy books in just ones. (Especially as the kind people at Waterstones often seem to have offers such as buy one get one half price or three for two and it would be rude not to indulge them.) So inevitably there are always books that wait along time to be read.

Here is a list of the long standing ones that I hope to read this year:

1. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
2. The City and the Pillar – Gore Vidal
3. Girl Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
4. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
5. The Player of Games – Iain M Banks
6. Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
7. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
8. Rentboy – Gary Indiana

No doubt their places will be taken by other books that I have bought or have been bought for me and are even now waiting eagerly to be read, only to be bitterly disappointed.