Richard Osman Has a (Tiny) Bone to Pick With John Grisham

What books are on your night stand?

Can I first say how much I like the term “night stand”? In the U.K. we call them “bedside tables,” which is so much more prosaic. 1-0 to the Americans there. All that said, on my bedside table I currently have Chris Whitaker’s “All the Colors of the Dark” and Kate Atkinson’s “Death at the Sign of the Rook.” Both brilliant, though neither will help you get to sleep.

How do you organize your books?

Haphazardly, which is how I believe books wish to be organized.

Describe your ideal reading experience.

I love to read on a long-haul flight, with no distractions, and no interruptions. It has to be a proper page-turner though. A few years ago I was flying to New York and I saw in the airport bookstore that John Grisham had a new book out. This was news to me, but I was delighted. The one thing you can guarantee with Grisham is that he’s going to keep you reading. So I settled down on the flight, gin and tonic in hand, and opened the book in a mood of great contentment. A couple of pages in I started to worry that Grisham might have lost his magic touch, and, after a couple more pages, I realized that John Grisham had actually written a children’s book, and that was, perhaps, why I hadn’t read about it. And so “Theodore Boone,” which I have no doubt went gangbusters with its intended market, was all I had to read for the next seven hours. I’m not sure I have ever forgiven him.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Don’t trust John Grisham.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

I finally got around to reading “Middlemarch” this year (review — “not bad at all, an author to keep an eye on”) so my next big gap is “Great Expectations.”

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You take great pains to tell readers you’re not done with the Thursday Murder Club quartet. Do you already sense their anger or disappointment?