What are you reading now?

[Retsum]

I've been reading this year's Booker Prize winning entry - The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. The principle character is an Astralian doctor (surgeon) and the book follows his life before the war (WW2), during the war (as a POW commanding 1000 Australians on the Burma railway) and after the war, although not in strict chronological order. There are two main strands and some lesser threads, all skillfully woven together. One strand is a love affair with the young wife of his uncle. I won't say much about that except that it is a relief from the relentless misery and horror of the other strand - the life of POWs used as tools to build the railway. Disease, beatings, starvation and death: if the book had focused solely on this, I would have found it difficult to complete.

In one of the lesser threads the author tries to see things from the Japanese point of view. To them the emperor is a god and his every wish must be fulfilled: failure is not an option. If you were fighting, you continued until you were killed or if the situation became hopeless, you killed yourself. Therefore when the allies surrendered at Singapore the prisoners were considered beneath contempt. Using them in place of the power tools which they lacked was therefore justified and if they (the POWs) died on the job, it was no more than they deserved.

I cannot say this is an enjoyable book but it is worth reading.

[Meg]

He was interviewed on TV a couple of weeks ago and said that it was his dad's story.

[Vivc113]

I am reading "larkwood"

A creepy mystery from the late 1800s set in one of these manor houses I love.

[Marcus Hazel-McGown]

Currently I am re-reading Terry Brook's Shannara (complete series)

[bobnetau]

Just finished reading Unbroken, now I am ready to go see the Movie.

[morag]

Just found the book I was reading ... I'm getting awfy absent minded Now I'll probably have to restart..also have another I was halfway through till I mislaid it and started the new one... sigh...yep, butter in the cupboard, canned goods in the fridge days...

[madge]

Reading "The Illuminations" by Kilwinning author Andrew O'Hagan which is set in Saltcoats.

Some names have been changed but it's easy to figure out what they are.

The Kandy Bar has been changed to The Candy Bar but others have their original name
for instance Bobbys Bar.




Madge

[morag]

Picked up an old classic, '1,000 senior moments' I found again while looking for something else , it's funny all over again
Here's a bit:
Thou Shalt Remember!
Bill Harbach, one of the first executive producers of The Tonight Show, once attempted to ask his secretary to telephone future guest Charlton Heston to arrange a rehearsal. " Get me...uh...Charleston Huston!" Harbach barked. "Wait - I, uh mean Charlton Hudson!" Suddenly recalling that the actor had starred as Moses in The Ten Commandments, he corrected himself. "You know who I mean!" he told his secretary, "Chester Moses."

1000 Senior Moments, Tom Friedman.

[5siamese7]

Anna of the five towns which I have read several times and it always gets to me. All that love lost through greed . Poor Willie adores Anna and yet doesn't realise that he is the love of her life. He becomes a bankrupt And Anna who was as much a victim as he was,was complicit in this. She tries to help him by giving him a large amount of money which he will use in Australia to start a new life. But Wille throws himself down a mineshaft and is never heard of again. Anna marries someone she doesn't love but finds compensation by thinking of Willie doing very well in Australia making lots of money. Read it and weep.

[bonzo]

Came across a book on amazon today called kerby it seems to be short stories about growing up in 90s Kilwinning anyone read it?

[Meg]

Quinton Jardine's first of the Bob Skinner novels - Skinner's Rules. Skinner is a Chief Inspector in the police, and heads up murder investigations. Have put off reading these books for a long time as I thought he might be too close to Rankin's Rebus - but glad to find out they are completely different - and there's over 40 to read. Love when I find a good author and the stories are page turners - got a long haul flight home today, so can pick this up if I can keep my eyes open long enough.

[Meg]

Just started Tony Blair Broken Vows - The Tragedy of Power by Tom Bower and can't put it down. I have read a couple of Bower's books before, and admire his investigative journalism - but this is a stoater. How on earth did this man ever get the Labour Party to align themselves with his policies.