If I had to list places I would not like to visit, I think ‘Anywhere in Africa’ would be pretty damn high on that list.
Not so for Tim Butcher, and I can’t decide if I should applaud his courage or bemoan his (in my mind) pointless bravado.
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This is my second time through this compilation of humorous short stories and it’s actually just as good as I remember it being.
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I’ve always wanted to read Ernest Hemingway’s books. I have a copy of ‘For whom the bell tolls’ glaring at me from my bookshelf. Must get round to reading that. Still, although this is a short book, it’s considered one of his best so a good start.
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The first of two books this month, Erich Maria Remarque’s ‘All quiet on the western front is generally held as one of the greatest war novels of all time. Not having read any other war novels, I can’t really comment on that, but I can tell you that this is a very good book.
The story centres on a group of German soldier in World War I and on one named Paul Bäumer in particular. It covers their training and convalescence as well as fighting in the trenches and details with a very neutral tone what they were put through during the course of the story.
I don’t like football.
There, I’ve admitted it. I tend to be the person looking around confused in a pub after a team scores. It has, unfortunately, separated me slightly from some of my football loving friends. Given all that, I don’t really read football literature.
The good thing about this book, for me anyway, is that football, whilst instigating events and being vitally important to some characters, is not what it’s really about. The meat of the book is in human interaction and in coping with a tragedy.
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