A universal complaint among authors is that we are too busy writing to do much reading. Strictly speaking, this isn’t quite true for most of us in so far as we do read—newspapers, websites, email, the omnipresent Facebook and other forums—but we don’t have much time to just park in a corner or lie in bed with a novel.

It’s important, though, to make time for the worlds and characters created by others. Not only are stories we enjoy relaxing, they transport us away from any worries we have and give our minds a break and a feed.

I’m making slow but enjoyable progress through JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy and Rachel A Olson’s The Seventh Layer right now. I also intend next week to start reading the third book by Ben Aaronovitch about his wonderful magician policeman, Whispers Under Ground. I don’t usually go beyond reading three novels at the same time but I always have at least three to finish reading because whenever one is completed and set aside, a newcomer joins the remaining two.

And then there are the non-fiction works. I’m re-reading Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd and am soon hoping to start another of his finely crafted works, Albion: the Origins of the English Imagination.

Whether you write or simply enjoy reading, what’s on your reading list right now?