The Wood, John Stewart Collis

This is an absolute delight of a book. It is another in the Penguin's English Journeys series and is an extract from Collis' most famous book The Worm Forgives the Plough.

The Wood tells of Collis' time in the Land Army during the second world war. He thinned and cleared an ash wood, by himself and using hand-tools. He found he loved the work and is eager to share his experiences and revelations with the reader. He tells of the pleasure of sitting in the sun, the satisfaction of a physical job outside and he talks of trees as 'tangible pieces of sunshine' in that they convert sunlight into growth. His musings still resonate all these years later.

The book is written beautifully, the words don't get in the way of what he is saying and he is constantly aware of a 'reader'. We feel as if Collis is chatting to us, as he would in a pub or over a meal. It is a quiet joy of a book.

Travels with Myself and Another, Martha Gellhorn

I hadn't heard of Martha Gellhorn until I found this book, though she was a renowned war correspondent, travel writer and novelist. She had an extraordinary life and I'm very interested to read more of her writing. This book follows her on five awful journeys; through China, the Caribbean, Africa, Russia and Israel.

The most striking thing in this book is Gellhorn's personality. I wonder how much of a different impression I would have got if I was reading about her thrilling experiences, rather than her hellish ones. She is searingly honest and doesn't try to be likeable, which is hugely freeing to read.

Gellhorn is extraordinary, she is very strong and whilst she complains a lot in this book it's not without reason. She never whines and isn't irritating, instead she is short tempered. She expects a lot from people and has no time for those she sees as incompetent or weak. She certainly has some prejudices too; sometimes her opinions and comments are difficult to take. She was fierce and I found the book refreshing.

The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt

Eli and Charlie Sisters make their living killing people for their boss; we follow them on a job and gradually find out about their lives, work and their relationship with each other.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Sisters Brothers, it is both an entertaining adventure story, and a musing on what it is to live a fulfilling life. It's funny, bloody sometimes poignant and is very entertaining.

Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom

Tuesdays with Morrie is a very beautiful, true story of Albom re-connecting with his university professor as the professor (Morrie) is dying. There are no great revelations in the book, but the story of what the men mean to each other and Morrie's desire to pass on his feelings about the most important things in life are very compelling. Morrie is a great man in alot of ways, though you feel there are many men and women like him, who live good lives with and for other people. It is well-told by Albom, the story is simple with little interludes. A meaningful and somehow tranquil, though sad, book.

Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

This is the best book I have read in a long time, it is a magnificent story and an absolute pleasure to read. The scope of the novel is huge, it spans over 10 years before, during and after the American Civil War.
We follow Scarlet O'Hara as she wills her way through war, poverty and society's disapproval fuelled by a powerful selfishness. She is a difficult character, she is unlikeable and incomparably selfish, but it is difficult not to admire and root for someone so driven and strong. She is eminently practical and unsentimental. She is fascinating.
Scarlett is the daughter of a plantation owner and race-relations is a huge part of the novel. It's worth saying that the way the novel handles race is very difficult, the opinions held by the protagonists are not ok and make for uncomfortable reading.

Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell

I'm familiar with Orwell and think 1984 is brilliant, but I always get the feeling I wouldn't have liked Orwell himself and so wasn't sure whether I would like Homage to Catalonia. I am living in Spain at the moment though and wanted to know more about the Spanish Civil War.  I came away with a reasonable picture of the infighting between the unions, communists and anarchists at the time.

The book recounts Orwell's time on the front line in the Spanish Civil War, for the most part around Huesca. Orwell was in Spain for around 8 months and saw two rounds of service. He was invalided out of the army owing to a bullet wound to the neck and had to leave Spain in a hurry as the POUM, who he was fighting for, was named illegal by the Government (who were on the same side 'against fascism').

Overwhelmingly the feeling in the book is one of disorganisation, boredom, confusion and futility. He talks a lot about politics and socialism but doesn't match the ideas with reality. Throughout the book I was wondering what on earth he was doing there, essentially doing nothing much but being cold and hungry for months at a time.

There are no characters other than Orwell himself, he references others by name but never introduces the reader to them, we don't know or care about anyone else. We don't even know the name of the woman he calls 'my wife' or know what she is doing besides living in a hotel in Barcelona, patiently waiting for him to come back from the front. This all contributes to the thin feeling of Homage to Catalonia. It's hard to care about the extras in a film suffering and dying, it's much easier to care about the protagonists. Orwell doesn't bring the war down to a human level.

On the back cover of the book there is a quote from Antony Beevor 'An unrivalled picture of the rumours, suspicions and treachery of civil war'. The blurb says Orwell writes with 'bitter intensity'. I don't think I read the same book.

Olive Ketteridge, Elizabeth Strout

Olive Ketteridge is a beautiful, rich portrait of ordinary lives when they don't play out as we might have thought. It is full of people dealing with disappointments or the aftermath of small tragedies. A quiet sadness pervades the novel yet it's not depressing. I concentrates not on the disappointments or tragedies themselves but the resilience of people and the way in which they carry on with their lives. A lot of novels deal with happenings and then leave the characters to cope, but Strout addresses the coping and it is refreshingly human.

I think the book is trying to be a 'whole' novel, though it reads as if it were originally written as a collection of short stories. Olive Ketteridge is the main protagonist for most of the stories, though in some she is just mentioned in passing. It is more a portrait of lives circling around each other in a town than a portrait of Ketteridge. This expectation only comes from the title, it would feel very different if the expectation wasn't there, if there was a different title. I did like the short-story format, I'm a huge fan of the short story, but I thought this book didn't commit to either being a collection of stories or a flowing novel. Aside from that it is a full, well rounded portrait of lives and is well worth a read.