I opened the latest offering from Swallow Bookworms with delighted anticipation.

Two pages later I was flicking through to find out whether the author stuck with the same style throughout.

He does.

It may be a work of genius for all I know to the contrary, but it is written in that present tense, stream of consciousness style which I find all but unreadable. I don't quite know why, but it is the reason why (give or take the odd essay) I have never finished anything by James Joyce or Virginia Woolf.

Probably my loss.