Half the books I remember best I read in conditions nobody would ever…

Half the books I remember best I read in conditions nobody would ever recommend: on a bus, standing up, in a corridor while waiting for something else entirely.

The version of reading everyone pictures, armchair and good lamp and two uninterrupted hours, is one I get about four times a year and mostly waste, because with two hours available I read the way you eat at a buffet.

Twenty snatched minutes on a bus is attention under pressure, and attention under pressure turns out to be the useful kind, which is not a thing I would have chosen to be true.