‘The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it’ – so goeth the Samuel Johnson dictum; I most admire those books that not enable me to endure life but show me how they got there. Serious plumbing of consciousness, not flashing of narrative legerdemain, helps me understand another human being. The former is boring in a good sense; the latter is boring in a bad sense. Not The world is boring; I want to escape it but The world is fascinating; I want to investigate it.