What's on your bookshelf?: pay 3 billion pounds to read five minutes early edition

Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I am ill, so no guest this week. To tide you over, here is a short excerpt from a story I started once about the redemptive power of forgiveness:

After much consideration, Brandon Halifax has decided his downward spiral into despair was inevitable. He was as powerless as a housecat crucified on a driftwood cross, rapidly approaching the lip of a waterfall. It wasn’t that his wife had died. Lots of people lose their stupid wives. No, it was that she was murdered by chickens. This felt unseemly to Brandon, like a shard of tin can jammed in the soft flesh behind his ear. It was a fucking stupid thing to have occurred. He didn’t gel with it one bit.

So he sat at the breakfast table, tearing strips off the newspaper, balling them up between his fingers, and shoving them into his mouth. He chewed them thoughtfully, spat out the wads, and stuck them carefully to the wireframe doll he’d prepared a few nights before. He was going to build a new wife. Then, he’d sprinkle her with arsenic and feed her to those fucking chickens.

A reasonable person might ask why Brandon Halifax didn’t just put the poison in some chicken feed. But Brandon had been listening to reasonable people his whole life, and where had that got him? Nowhere. Less than nowhere. Widowed by poultry.

Truly beautiful stuff, if I do say myself. Please, do share your weekly bookly exploits. Regular posting will resume next week. Book for now!