way with words

It has been a good two weeks now since I moved my lazy butt. I should be training for a marathon, but just looking out the window makes me want to curl up underneath the tea cozy. Nights are freezing, days are cold, rain is frequent, and sometimes it snows. Don't even talk to me about going outside. Is there still a park between Imperial and Notting Hill? I don't know; I haven't been there in weeks.

This winter is so dramatically different from last it's hard to believe it's the same country. Last year, I put my jacket away halfway through February. This year, I can almost ski to work. Riding home tonight, I was blinded by a million little ice crystals grating my pupils on their way to the frozen ground. Shivering and wet, I cursed the elements. Where is spring?

There is one good side to the misery – it's gone when I close the door, turn up the heat, make some espresso and sink into my sofa. The comfort of my home finds renewed recognition, an appreciation quickly lost on a good day and most weekends, when London is my living room. These days I'm content to kick back, listen to music or watch movies.

In light of some recently developed shopping habits of mine, the sloth imposed by the elements is quite welcome. It seems that word of impending economic doom has made people careful with their money. Stores, in return, are touting their wares with more vigor than ever before. Bargains abound, and I've been around a bit to scoop them up. My stack of unwatched DVDs, purchased mostly for three pounds apiece, is growing rapidly and starts to compete with my heap of unread books. I take every rainy evening I can get to watch a film and see the pile whither.

I also keep reading and I'm delighted to report the completion of the first book this year, a compilation of the best American short stories of 1998. The book is one in a long series, dating back to 1915 and still going strong. In case you're wondering, I didn't pick the year. This was what was on the shelf of the South Kensington Oxfam. Had there been others, I'd have bought them also, or I should have, retrospectively.

The book is a fountain of some literary brilliance, as you would expect of a best-of. Less obvious is the breadth of talent assembled on the pages. There are some unavoidable luminaries (John Updike, Annie Proulx) who serve reliable quality, but they are all but drowned out by a cacophony of young authors who write ferociously at time and unconventionally at others.

The best story of all was Penance by Matthew Crain, a captivating tale of a landscaper who finds himself professionally in charge of a mentally challenged fellow half a boy and half a man. The plot pulled me along, the writing delighted me greatly, the narrative created suspense and threw up questions. On the last page or two, the questions were answered when the original plot was revealed as a decoy for telling an entirely different story, a story that drives all the main character's actions but remains invisible until the very end. It was as if the protagonist were safeguarding his inner self with a thick layer of distractive ornament, reluctant to admit his past even to himself. With their complexities within complexities, both the story itself and central character were like Russian dolls. Magnificent.

The other day, Amazon unveiled the second generation of their electronic book, the Kindle. With a price tag of a good fifty softcovers, it doesn't come cheap, and content isn't a bargain either. Why does a downloaded book cost more than one printed on paper? I'm not sure how much of an impact the Kindle will make, but I see that options open that have never existed in the time of the first-edition hardcover. Traditional publishers crave authors that can fill 500 pages because that's what can be sold profitably. Could the Kindle with its potential for impulsive downloads herald the return to prominence of the short story, flawless writing for your commute at a pound a piece? I, for one, would rejoice. The short story collection I just finished showcased 20 authors with their best works, filling slightly less than 300 pages. With so much diversity (and so little time), why would anyone read fat novels – never mind icy drizzle outside.