So my book reading project is going well.

Last night I finished the enormous tome that is Alan Bennett's Untold Stories, which (nerdishly) I read from cover to cover as though I was reading a novel. It's really fragments from his diary and stories about his life, cobbled together when he thought (and his doctors thought) he was probably dying.

One of the best things I discovered about him was the stance he took in relation to Oxford University, the university he attended and apparently loved. He was, however, horrified when they set up "The Rupert Murdoch Chair in Communications". When asked to attend a charity event, and later to accept an honorary degree at the university, Bennett wrote back to them and suggested "that if the university thinks it's appropriate to take Rupert Murdoch's money, perhaps they ought to approach Sadam Hussein to found a chair in peace studies".

I wish I could be offered lots of important-sounding honours so that I could wittily and pointedly turn them down.

So that's two books (one play and one autobiography) as well as two essays by Cooke and now almost half of an extract from a James Kelman book (yes I know, extracts shouldn't count, but this is the information age so I'm doing well to even maintained my concentration throughout this paragraph. I bet you skimmed).

You did so.