John Irving

John Irving was in town last week, fresh from the Edinburgh festival to give a public interview to Myles Dungan for Rattlebag on RTÉ1. Irving was revealing and loquacious, holding forth on his absent father, (who died without the two meeting) the tattoos he got in research for his current epic Until I Find You and his current writing plans. He was slighter and smaller than expected and looked a good decade younger than his 63 years. Unsurprisingly, for a man who's fiction has always appeared confessional, his own life sounded just like an Irving story, all underage sex, strong women and complicated families. Having finished his current book over the last eight years he has now embarked on novel 12 of which no more details were provided other than the first and last chapters being finished with the middle unimagined and unwritten. He said he always begins his novels with the last chapter which explained his curious selection for his reading – bits of the end and beginning in non-sequential order. He is also working on screenplays for The Fourth Hand, A Son of the Circus and an original screenplay being developed with Lasse Hallstrom who directed the film which won Irving his Oscar, The Cider House Rules. He expressed the kinship he feels with current authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunther Grass & Michael Ondaate who write, like Irving, with the plotting of the Victorians he reveres like Dickens. He also exploded the myth that he does not like signing his books, explaining to Village, as he autographed Until I Find You, that he merely hates rather than avoids the task.

In the week which Victoria Beckham confessed to having never read a book to the Spanish press, Village thinks all celebrities should tell the truth about their reading habits. (We had always assumed that Posh wrote little if any of her own biography Learning to Fly but did she not even see what her ghostwriter wrote about her?) Our weekly Bush watch demonstrates what we mean – in a move that suggests his aides saw Village's naming of The Very Hungry Caterpillar as the President's favourite book, the White House released George's holiday reading list for summer 2005. We think someone might be trying to impress us. Granted, he has taken more holidays than any other President but who could be looking forward to reading these round the campfire? Who would decide to follow The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Plague with Salt: A World History. For light relief? Mark Kurlansy's Alexander II, the as yet unpublished biography of the last Tsar. While we could take the familiar path and suggest this is a West Wing-like joke on behalf of his Communications Staff, surely Laura Bush, an ex-librarian, will try and slip him something light hearted for nights on the ranch.

Everytime Google out-innovates Microsoft, I get a cold shiver of delight running up my back. No doubt they'll soon be running the world and their internet calling wheeze will infuriate us all, but for now anything that annoys Mr Gates is fine by me. Google has also been developing plans which threaten to revolutionise the way in which we access and read texts. They plan to scan the contents of four major US libraries including Stanford & Harvard, at the cost of $200m, so that the text rather than just the titles of books will be available to all using their search engine. Despite not being due to finish until 2015, the plan has thrown the world of publishing into revolt and if it proceeds and works it should turn our habits for researching, enquiring and reading books on their heads. The whole thing has ground to an inevitable halt to give US publishers a chance to indicate which texts are copyright protected and to reinforce their legal positions. One senses there may be bloodletting ahead. For those books that are out of copyright there seems to be no such problem and 2006 should see the world begin to access a Pandora's box of classic texts needing only a broadband connection. Bookstores should love it.