Well Read

I have always loved books. I learned to read when I was very wee and the family joke was if I couldn't find anything to read. I'd leaf through the phone book.
Luckily, my dad - a Church of Scotland minister - had a study crammed to the gunnels with books and there was always something to read, albeit some obscure tome about a 19th century hymn writer... Fanny Crosby anyone?
Since I had children, my reading has slowed to a trickle. And of course there's social media to bite into whenever you have a spare minute. I've also been co-writing a biography (how could I forget?!) so that cut into all reading time.
Holidays used to be my one opportunity to devour all the books I'd been storing all year, but when kids are wee, they're too full on to devote all your attention to a book.
Now that they're a bit older (and joy-of-joys reading themselves) my holiday reading has suddenly got back on track.
As you can see from this pool-side picture, I'm still a devotee of an actual book. There's something about it not running out of power and being a thing you can handle.
The book in this picture is called The Blue Horse and the author is my Herald colleague, Phillip Miller, who is the newspaper's full-time arts correspondent.
I've had it since March when I went to Phil's book launch.
As Phil goes about his job interviewing artists at home and abroad, he's clearly been taking notes - and not just the ones which find their way into his news stories.
The hero of The Blue Horse is a young grief-stricken art historian and curator called George Newhouse who finds himself adrift in Edinburgh having taken up a new position with a public gallery following the sudden death of his wife.
The book opens with the lines:
George Newhouse was in love with his wife.
But his wife was dead.
This sets the tone for a tale which takes the reader on a page-turning odyssey as George struggles to comes to terms this loss.
With few friends and his closest family far-away, he turns to his work, not to mention the odd illicit drug and meaningless sexual encounter as a focus for taking his mind off his grief.
George is a complex, flawed, character, who isn't one for small talk. Phil manages to draw him out bit by bit and make you cheer his triumphs and fret at his disasters. By-the-by, he also paints a loving and honest portrait of George's dead wife, Ruth.
The plot revolves around a lost masterpiece called The Blue Horse, a painting by a neglected Dutch artist called Pieter Van Doelenstraat - a contemporary of Rembrandt.
Years before he pitched up in Edinburgh, George discovered a letter in which Rembrandt had written about The Blue Horse: "that damned painting vexes my mind's eye'.
The search for this 'damned painting' acts as a trigger for darker forces to enter into George's story. And not just the supernatural kind...
Along the way, George enters the occasionally crazy world of contemporary art - and some of the passages which deal with this made me smile in recognition.
It all ends with a bang (hope that's not a spoiler) at one of the biggest contemporary art festival of them all, The Venice Biennale.
Phil is a natural storyteller with a poet's voice. It's not an easy hop to make the move from from news reporter to novelist, but he has written a fine debut novel and I look forward to reading his next one by the pool.
No pressure, Phil.