I have a complete obsession

with the novels of Dick Francis, I love that guy's stuff, and I was thrilled to see the other day at Sarah Weinman's site that he has a new book coming out this summer. There's a very nice interview with him today at the Guardian (the interviewer is Stuart Jeffries).

I feel that I have been learning over the course of the last few years what kind of a writer I am, and have regretfully had to give up the idea that I will ever be able to write novels like these ones. I would really, really love to, but the fact is that any novel I write is going to be slightly awkwardly bristling with ideas and strangeness and not going to be the universally delightful start-to-finish read with appealing narrator/protagonist and cool but not excessive research (subtly and unobtrusively masculine though actually it was his wife who did a lot of the research--perhaps it's masculine in the way many women are interested in men's worlds) that is the prototypical Dick Francis novel. But I want there to be lots of reincarnations of Dick Francis in the popular fiction genre--more, more, more....

Previous Light Reading posts on Dick Francis (highlights): my extended thoughts on the life and works of Dick Francis; why Peter Temple should be the new Dick Francis; what Lee Child's Jack Reacher books have in common with the novels of Dick Francis. (Actually when I searched the blog for references there are as many as 25, though a few of those are redundant; it would make a funny entry in the index entry of the notional autobiography I will never write. "Francis, Dick. Obsession with-- XX. JMD takes day off school in seventh grade to go to book-signing of XXX. JMD likens to Ken Bruen. JMD speculates on nature of appeal of." etc.)