The joys of random reading

Robert McCrum at The Guardian.

This summer, I continued my habit of happening on my holiday reading at my destination, which delivered some satisfying surprisesn unplanned pleasure ... Nevil Shute. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

For my summer reading this year I followed the policy I pioneered a couple of years ago, living off the land, so to speak, and reading serendipitously whatever turned up on my travels.

OK, I cheated a bit. I took Michael Ondaatje's delightful new novel The Cat's Table in advance of my interview with him in Toronto. I also smuggled in a paperback copy of Running in the Family, my favourite of his books. Otherwise, I took just my notebook and a pencil, and read whichever new book crossed my path.

It is extraordinarily liberating to travel light, bookwise. The first title I scored, on the plane to Boston, was a very battered copy of Nevil Shute's No Highway, an air travel thriller from the post-war years. Shute has become slightly forgotten now, but he was a terrific popular entertainer in the 40s and 50s, with a very good, robust storytelling style. A Town Like Alice, On the Beach, In The Wet and The Chequer Board are some of his titles I'm planning to re-read this autumn.

Next, now staying with friends in the USA, I picked up a copy of The Hobbit. Again, I have not read this in years, and was soon deep in Middle Earth with Bilbo Baggins. Tolkien has a very nice, easy narrative voice and is a naturally gifted storyteller. It was reassuring to find that a childhood book holds up well on reacquaintance.

What else? In no special order, I also read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, the last of his new journalism books before he became a full-blown novelist with Bonfire of the Vanities; The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffery Steingarten; Six Men by Alistair Cook; and a collection of John Updike essays.

Updike is a wonderful critic, so humane, sophisticated and beady-eyed; also a great American novelist. A lot of fuss is made about the post-war American giants like Mailer, Bellow and Roth. For my money, at his best, Updike can leave them standing in his dust.

Coming home, I had a new edition of Tinker, Tailor Soldier Spy, a film tie-in, for the return flight. Le Carré, like Updike, is another of those giants from the 60s and 70s whose work only seems to get better with the passage of time. I've just seen a preview of the forthcoming film of Tinker, Tailor which will surely propel Le Carré to the top of everyone's reading list again.

Back in London, the latest edition of Chambers English Dictionary has just landed on my desk. I'm going to write more about that on Sunday. But I close by nominating my favourite word – "willow" – inspired by Chambers' list of "words to cherish" (PDF). I wonder what other words readers of this blog particularly favour ?