Good reads

[SerjeantWildgoose]

...Or it could be just be a fond memory of watching the film whilst skyving off school as a youngster.

How many times do I have to fecking tell you?

That was Walkabout!

It wasn't the sea, it was a pond.

And it wasn't an old man, that was Jenny Aguter's blurt!!!

[rowan]

Good effort! Wouldn't know where to start with a similar list of my own so while I give it some thought, forgive me for commenting on your superb lists?

Fiction:

1 Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beacher Stowe - Read too much about it to ever want to read it. The book that caused the war? Hmmmm ...?
2 To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Well more likely Truman Capote, but an utterly superb novel, possibly one of the most important to come out of any country at any time. "That was the last time she [Scout] ever saw Boo Radley," had me howling! Then again, I still howl when Jenny Aguter says, "Daddy! My Daddy!"
3 East of Eden - John Steinbeck - I am saving this sumptuous gem for the slow days of retirement.
4 Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - You're a better man than me Gunga Din. Can't imagine ever getting round to Dostoyevsky.
5 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - Only read 1 Dickens; Oliver Twist. Next on the list is a Tale of Two Cities - saving that for the worst of time.
6 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - I read this on the prairie in Canada in 1989 in the hope of impressing a very attractive girl from Montana who was traveling up to meet me in Calgary to go and see the the show. Missed so much kip reading the flipping thing that as soon as the lights went down in the warm theatre I nodded off and was put out for snoring over the I Dreamed a Dream sketch. Seems ironic in retrospect, but it cost me a shag!
7 Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes - Closest I have been is Green's Monsignor Quixote; which I don't suppose is very close at all?
8 Wild Swans - Jung Chang - Shamefully, I've never heard of this.
9 Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner - Read down my Goodreads list convinced that I had read Absolom, Absolom at some stage; then remembered I gave it to a homesick American Air Force Colonel in Baghdad. Serves her right for being so bloody miserable.
10 For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway - in my opinion this is absolutely, beyond doubt the most loathsome and unreadable of any of the so-called essential modern classics. Hate the man and his work.
11 The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy - Now on my list to read.
12 In Dubious Battle - John Steinbeck - Not his best but reminds me of the old joke, "How was the worst blow-job you ever had?" "Brilliant!"
13 Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger - Worse than Hemmingway, but thankfully not as prolific.
14 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - As for Davy C.
15 Germinal - Emile Zola - Read L'Assommoir in Mali. It was superb, but I was depressed enough before I started; it and the Harmattan nearly did for me
16 To A God Unknown - John Steinbeck - great, wonderful, brilliant. All of these things, but if you haven't read Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row (And there's no way you would rate TAGU above either) you need to get on it.
17 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - first book I actually got my son's to read. Sadly they're a couple of Lennies.
18 The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway - Worse than Salinger etc, etc, etc ...
19 Memed my Hawk - Yasar Kemal - Also now on my list
20 Roots - Alex Hayley - I still remember the 1st episode of the TV series. Might get round to it one day, but the way we write about the Famine, I'll not be running out of our own tragedy any time soon.

Other favourites include Maxim Gorky's My Childhood, Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (Couldn't find the hook to stay with it - and I was in West Africa so should have had everything on my side), & Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country. The anti-war trio, Red Badge of Courage, Slaughterhouse Five (OK, but I hoped to be more impressed than I was) & Catch 22 (Brilliant. Read in Sarajevo during a miserably cold winter) are also great reads, along with the German classic All Quiet on the Western Front (Brilliant, but there's better, I think). Of course, I could include many other classics by authors I've already mentioned, notably Dickens, Steinbeck, Heminway and Dostoyevsky . . .

Non-fction
1 Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
2 The People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
3 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe - A book to change your view of the world. If I had to recommend 1 book to every comfortable 50 year old conservative, this would be it.
4 Gaza in Crisis - Noam Chomsky
5 Tangata Whenua - Anderson, Binney, Harris
6 India - John Keay
7 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
8 Man's Conquest of the Pacific - Peter Bellwood
9 The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk - Feck! Seriously? Are ye still reading it? We've used my copy to weigh down the Christmas Tree stand for at least 5 years.
10 Heroes - John Pilger
11 A Modern History of the Kurds - David McDowal
12 Hegemony of Survival - Noam Chomsky
13 In Cold Blood - Truman Capote - I think you'll find that Harper Lee wrote this!
14 Rogue State - William Blum
15 The Blood Never Dried - John Newsinger
16 Britain's Gulag - Caroline Elkins
17 Ottoman Centuries - Lord Kinross
18 Blood of Brothers - Stephen Kinzer
19 The World Until Yesterday - Jared Diamond
20 Paradise Lost - Giles Milton - Never! Not if I live to 150!


Another non-fiction classic was Hemingway's history of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon. Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America and Precopius' Byzantine Histories are great texts which I read online. Muhammad Ali's autobiography an interesting read, while the best autobiography about Turkey I've read was Irfan Orga's Portrait of a Turkish Family.

Thanks for this Rowan - not easy to compile, I'm sure, and far easier for me to pick over. But I've now got a few new titles to look for when I next visit Foyles.

You're most welcome. Literature was actually my major, and it's a privilege to have the chance to share my views on it.

Uncle Tom's Cabin caused the war? You mean the Civil War, obviously. I hadn't heard that before, but I know it had a major impact on thinking at the time - as great books tend to do...

Do you think To Kill a Mockingbird may have really been written by Capote? I've always wondered about both Uncle Tom's Cabin & To Kill a Mockingbird. One hit wonders, both written by white women about black people. Was it possible some other leading figure actually wrote them and simply attributed their work to a female writer to avoid handling the controversy themselves? With Uncle Tom's Cabin it's almost as though a team of writers were involved. But who knows? There used to be conspiracy theories about Shakespeare too, until computer technology established by word choice percentages that it was certainly his own work. I think Marlowe was closest but still quite distinctive from Shakespeare.

East of Eden is my favourite Steinbeck novel, and Steinbeck is probably my favourite writer overall (edging Dickens because he's a little easier on the eye).

David Copperfield is said to be at least partly autobiographical, and perhaps for that reason seems the most realistic Dickens' many classics. I almost felt like I was walking around the streets of Victorian England with him during the month or so I spent reading that book. Dickens was the master entertainer, catering for all classes and ages, and weaving in humor, tragedy, adventure and all the rest of it. In those days people didn't have TV, of course, so they spent their evenings at home reading.

I read the first half of Les Miserables in Spain and the second half after arriving in Turkey, and they almost seemed like two different books as well. The first half was pure genius. The second, as I recall, seemed like it had been added as an after-thought, just to extend the novel to a length more befitting of the classics of the day.

I don't think I've heard of Monsignor Quixote. But the original is definitely worth reading. We studied it at university, in fact, which was a real privilege. Cervantes, btw, was once wounded in battle against the Ottomans.

Wild Swans is about 20th century China and was all the rage a couple of decades ago. But it's amazing how many people I encounter today who have never heard of it. I guess it's fame didn't last. But it was a very thorough and entertaining account of the civil war between the Communists and the American-backed Kuomintang (who survive in Taiwan), followed by the Cultural Revolution. One of the very few books I've bothered to read twice.

Faulkner's tough but worthwhile and Sound and the Fury had to be told through the eyes of a retard because of the taboo issues involved - in this case incest.

Easy to understand why people despise Hemingway with his chauvenist, ultramasculine values, but there's no disputing the man was an artist. I have to say I didn't enjoy all his work, which separates him from Steinbeck and Dickens, in my books, but much of what he wrote was sheer poetry, and for me For Whom the Bell Tolls was top of the list. Probably not the best account of the Spanish Civil War ever given, however. I'll grant you that.

The God of Small Things is a real tear-jerker and sheer poetry in parts. Not a particularly long book, but it leaves that great pile of pretentious rubbish 'A Suitable Boy' in the dust and provides a real insight into the hardships of life on the sub-continent.

In Dubious Battle was brutal. Pulled no punches, and wasn't intended to. Not quite up there with East of Eden and the Wrathful Grapes for entertainment value, but was certainly a page-turner. Yes, I've read both the Wrathful Grapes and Cannery Row. The former might have been spoiled for me slightly because I'd already seen the (Henry Fonda) movie. Cannery Row was okayish but certainly not among my favourites. I don't recall it involving much in the way of adventure.

Catcher in the Wry appealed to me mostly because it was so quirky and seemingly pointless, like nothing I'd ever read before, yet somehow I couldn't put it down. Holden Caulfield had got inside my head with his quirky, pointless nonsense, and in the end I got it; that's all his life as a youth in white middle-class America was about.

"L'Assommoir" - not familiar with it, but sounds interesting. I'll look out for it. Were you in Mali when you read it? What was that like - aside from the Harmattan?

Of Mice & Men and Old Man & the Sea were insightful commentaries on human nature whose enduring messages transcend time, culture and borders and ring true in every society and age.

Memed my Hawk is widely regarded as the greatest work in Turkish literary history. Peter Ustinov actually made (and starred in) a film based on the book back in the early 80s, low-budget and heavily reliant on Ustinov's own comic genius, while the posh English accents just didn't quite bring the Chukarova chieftains and peasants to life for me.

Roots the mini-series was perhaps the best thing I ever saw on TV. & seeing it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book either, when I read it several years later.

Regarding the non-fiction, note that Giles Milton's Paradise Lost should not be confused with the 17th century poem by John Milton. It is about the final destruction of Smyrna (Izmir) at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Situated on the Aegean Coast, basically facing Athens across the sea, Smyrna had a Greek majority at the time and also a sizable community of well-to-do foreigners, notably Americans and Europeans (Aristotle Onassis was among its progeny). But the Greek army made the grave error of burning villages on its final restreat from Turkey, and the Turks had their revenge at Smyrna, where they burnt the city down.

Aside from the books I've mentioned, I'd add that I was a huge fan of James A Michener and Wilbur Smith in my youth. I learnt a great deal about history from the former, and also quite a bit about South Africa from the latter - but either Smith's writing deteriorated drastically toward the end of his career, or I just outgrew him, because the last couple of books I read of his were absolutely dreadful.

[rowan]

Here's the Ustinov adaption of Memed My Hawk on youtube:

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Funny! The first 'grown-up' book I read was by Wilbur Smith.

We had a small dry-pantry in the house I was dragged up in and for some reason that's where my parents kept their books (I still associate books with the smells of flour and slightly dodgy butter). I often wondered why either of them would want to read something called Mandingo! (The '!' intrigued me). One pissing-awful summer day my father, on his way out the door on the afternoon shift, said, "Here, put yer sister's Enid Blyton down and read this." It was Wilbur Smith's When the Lion Feeds. I'd it read in 2 days. We had been passing a semen-shattered copy of Xavier Hollander's The Happy Hooker around class that Spring so I had been exposed to snatches of written porn, but Smith even dealt with the sex stuff in a way that I could manage (Life was very different for a 14 year old back then!). By the end of the summer I'd worked my way up to date with everything he'd published, including reading The Sunbird twice (It remains one of my favourite books) and I suspect that the first time I truly wanted a book, rather than just picking up what was available, would have been the weeks waiting for A Sparrow Falls to be published and to make it onto the shelves of our local book shop.

I must have moved on after that summer. After having read the first dozen or so, I've just checked his bibliography and think I've maybe read 2 or 3 of the last 23.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Do you think To Kill a Mockingbird may have really been written by Capote?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/books ... .html?_r=0

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=5244492

I think, on balance, that the right names are on the front covers of To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood; but I think both Lee and Capote had a great deal to do with the writing of both books.

[rowan]

Snap! When the Lion Freeds was also the first adult novel I ever read too. I went on to finish the trilogy (since adapted for TV in SA, apparently), and read everything else he'd written at the time. Yes, Sunbird was brilliant, along with Shout at the Devil - which was adapted into a Hollywood movie starring Lee Marvin. I think the last book of his that I actually enjoyed was the first one about Egypt. But after that his work just seemed to become increasingly depraved and openly racist. I got the distinct impression he was almost begging for another of his books to be adapted for Hollywood too. Perhaps he imagined it would exonerate him from the increasing amount of controversy he was creating, but a few of his novels read like movie scripts. I got the same impression when I read so-called 'modern classics' such as Da Vinci Code & Kite Runner, I'm afraid.

ps thanks for the links re Capote & Lee. Always enjoy a good conspiracy theory. But I think the voice in Mockingbird was very distinctive and had to have come from the latter, while Capote probably only helped her with structure and editing at most - similar to Thackeray and Charlotte Bronte.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Uncle Tom's Cabin caused the war? You mean the Civil War, obviously. I hadn't heard that before, but I know it had a major impact on thinking at the time - as great books tend to do...

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/262986 ... w=fulltext

[rowan]

Ah, yes, the 'So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!' quote. I have heard that before. Going back to the Lee-Capote theory, I guess that's been part of the problem in the past - sexist attitudes toward the 'little woman.' It's as though society itself struggled to reconcile great literature with female writers. Curious though, that a disproportionately large number of one-hit-wonders were in fact women. Can't think of too many by men. There were countless who only wrote one great classic, of course, such as Sallinger, Kerouac & Joseph Heller, but they certainly wrote other books. In fact, Bram Stoker is about the only male one-hit-wonder I can think of off-hand. Edit: In fact, a quick google shows me he also wrote others.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

... and not forgetting the no-hit-wonders like Kinsley Amis!

[SerjeantWildgoose]

If I gave it another 10 minutes I'd no doubt change about a quarter of these. I have limited myself to 1 book by any author so no place in the non-fiction list for Steinbeck's Travels With Charlie or Greene's Journey Without Maps or for O'Connor's Guests of the Nation in my fiction list.

Non-Fiction

1. The Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuściński
2. Wind, Sand and Stars – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The Story of San Michelle - Axel Munthe
4. Strangers in the House – Raja Shehadeh
5. An Army at Dawn – Rick Atkinson
6. Battle Cry of Freedom – James McPherson
7. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine – Illan Pappe
8. In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz – Michela Wrong
9. Up in the Old Hotel – Joseph Mitchell
10. The Places Inbetween – Rory Stewart
11. Firing Line – Richard Holmes
12. The Sleepwalkers – Christopher Clarke
13. The Chief – Gary Sheffield
14. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers – Paul Kennedy
15. The Big Fellow – Frank O’Connor
16. Decision in Normandy – Carlo D’Este
17. The Turn of the Tide – Arthur Bryan
18. The Price of Glory – Alistair Horne
19. The Moon’s a Balloon – David Niven
20. The Fight – Norman Mailer

So many other superb travelogues, histories and biographies - and anything from Rick Atkinson's and Carlos D'Este's invasion trilogies could be on there (I think I've picked the best). Impossible to understand how Margaret MacMillan, John Keegan and Max Hastings are missing.

Fiction

1. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
2. So Long, See You Tomorrow – William Maxwell
3. A Burnt Out Case – Graham Greene
4. Disgrace – J M Coetzee
5. Famine – Liam O’Flaherty
6. Stoner – John Williams
7. Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson
8. Amongst Women – John McGahern
9. Kirbet Khizeh – S Yizhar
10. 1984 – George Orwell
11. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
12. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
13. A Long, Long Way – Sebastian Barry
14. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
15. The Devil’s Larder – Jim Crace
16. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
17. Absolute Friends – John Le Carre
18. The Throwback – Tom Sharpe
19. The Sunbird – Wilbur Smith
20. The Patriot’s Progress – Henry Williamson

The top 7 are nailed on as my favourite novels; the rest could be replaced by any other book by Steinbeck or Greene. There wasn't room for any Ian McEwan, most of his stuff could fight its way in and The Road could give way to just about anything I have read by McCarthy. No place for Meyer's The Son or Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, both of which are stunning.

[rowan]

Wow, sorry to say I haven't heard of most of those books. From your fiction list I've read 1, 4, 10 & 19, and from the non-fction list just 6 & 7.

As far as fiction goes, I pretty well devoted a couple of decades of my reading life to working my way through the classics, which I mostly enjoyed (they're not classics for nothing)! But finally I reached a point where I just couldn't read any more, and now I'm always on the lookout for more contemporary novels from Asia and Africa and other parts of the non-English speaking world. That's a bit of a hit and miss process, and there no so easy to find in Turkey either.

Regarding non-fiction, I mostly read history and just a little bit of political critique - usually about the Middle East, though pretty much anything by Chomsky and one or two others. Ottoman history is fascinating too. Never get tired of that stuff. & I'm as much into ancient history, including anthropology and sometimes archaeology, as I am into modern history perhaps even a little more so.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

In that case 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 14 and 20 from my non-fiction list should bang your gongs.

You MUST read 9 and should read 2, 3, 7, 11, 15 and 18 from the fiction list. They tick the boxes suggested by your own list in most cases, the others will just add to your life.

You must get a hold of and read Kirbet Khizeh. It was published as fiction, but is widely regarded as being a 1st hand account of al-Nakbah from the view point of a soldier of the IDF. While the novella was, for a time, taught on the Israeli high school curriculum it was soon withdrawn when it was increasingly realised that its brutality laid bare the so-called original sin of the state of Israel. This book was recommended to me by Raja Shehadeh as one that I must read if I was to begin to understand the West's failure to grasp the appalling injustice that Israel has visited upon, and continues to visit upon, the people of Palestine.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

...pretty much anything by Chomsky and one or two others.

I saw Chomsky and Pappe speaking together at the Edinburgh literary festival a few years ago. Pappe was superb, but Chomsky appeared a bit of a wind-bag, full of his own import and too bloody idle to engage with an audience that was largely onside but, unlike Chomsky, willing to give air-space to the odd dissenting voice.

[rowan]

Thanks yet again for the recommendations. So much to read and so little time! Yes, Kirbet Khizeh sounds right up my alley. Surprised I've never heard of it. Actually I'm not sure I've ever read a novel on the topic of Palestine. I've read loads of history books - including Chomsky and Pappe's latest joint effort 'On Palestine.' I also read a fairly good autobiographical account a few years ago, 'In Search of Fatima' by Ghada Karmi (I reviewed it for the Hurriyet in English newspaper in fact). Just about to start Saramago's 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.' It's only the second Saramago for me. I read Raised from the Ground' a few years ago and it wasn't bad, though nothing special, as I recall. Then I've got Chomsky's 'Turning the Tide' lined up. After that it's back to the book stores, and I'll look out for some of those you've mentioned.

NB: Chomsky possibly getting a bit weary & leary in his old age. Pilger's the same, I hear. He can be quite obnoxious with his live audiences at times. Didn't used to be like that, but these guys are getting on and Chomsky, in particularly, is unlikely to be with us much longer, sadly. If any man deserves a state funeral . . .

[switchskier]

...pretty much anything by Chomsky and one or two others.

I saw Chomsky and Pappe speaking together at the Edinburgh literary festival a few years ago. Pappe was superb, but Chomsky appeared a bit of a wind-bag, full of his own import and too bloody idle to engage with an audience that was largely onside but, unlike Chomsky, willing to give air-space to the odd dissenting voice.

I think that I was at that. Never been much of a Chomsky fan but that day he certainly seemed to be phoning it in and picking up a pay check. I love the Edinburgh book festival though.

What do you guys see in Jared Diamond? Some really interesting ideas but I found his writing style pretty turgid. Too much of an effort for me.

Fun idea though with some excellent suggestions. Going to have a think about my list later.

[Vengeful Glutton]

Amusing Ourselves To Death

Neil Postman

[rowan]

...pretty much anything by Chomsky and one or two others.

I saw Chomsky and Pappe speaking together at the Edinburgh literary festival a few years ago. Pappe was superb, but Chomsky appeared a bit of a wind-bag, full of his own import and too bloody idle to engage with an audience that was largely onside but, unlike Chomsky, willing to give air-space to the odd dissenting voice.

I think that I was at that. Never been much of a Chomsky fan but that day he certainly seemed to be phoning it in and picking up a pay check. I love the Edinburgh book festival though.

What do you guys see in Jared Diamond? Some really interesting ideas but I found his writing style pretty turgid. Too much of an effort for me.

Fun idea though with some excellent suggestions. Going to have a think about my list later.

Chomsky is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophical thinkers of the modern era, "the Plato of his time," and personally I find him most lucid and erudite, both in his writing and speaking, though it is true that he is sometimes prone to bouts of disinterest and even incoherence - which is perfectly understandable in his old age. Still, an extremely intelligent, knowledgeable, courageous and honest individual who has done the world a great service with his unreserved critiques of both his own nation and the one founded (for want of a more brutal word) in the name of his religion.

Jared Diamond brought a whole new perspective to anthropology, history and science and turned many longstanding misconceptions on their head. In Guns, Germs & Steel he began with the observation the average Papuan was actually a lot sharper than the average Westerner because in their life survival of the fittest remains a very significant factor. Their knowledge of botany is the equivalent of a master's degree, while they are invariably able to speak several languages fluently (regarded as dialects but generally more distinct from one another than Spanish and Portuguese, and often more so than Spanish and English, in fact).

Later he goes on to point out that humans have never succeeded in taming any species native to the African continent. That is because we evolved alongside them and they instinctively regard as just another 'animal,' whereas animals native to the other continents had no instinctive fear of us, allowing for easy hunting (until they learned to fear us) or domestication.

The Third Chimpanzee is also a great read, where he writes about the fact that the bonobo apes so closely resemble chimps that until very recently they were simply referred to us 'pygmy chimpanzees.' That is, until DNA research established that they are as different from chimpanzees as humans are. Or, to put it another way, we are as closely related to chimps as are the bonobos, who we regarded as basically the same species until DNA proved otherwise!

The last Diamond book I read was The World until Yesterday, and once again it was full of mind-boggling facts. For example, he explained how in societies with traditionally low sugar intakes the body has developed the ability to 'hoard' sugar. which was all fine and dandy until they were introduced to the Western (American) diet in the age of globalization. The result was chronic obesity, with Polynesians, Arabs and black Africans among the most severely effected. It's not that their diet is any different to Europeans,' it's just that Europeans don't have the 'hoarding' mechanism. Seems like we get all the breaks ...

[Numbers]

Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee

She has a lovely style of writing, not the impact of TKaMB but still very much worth reading.

[rowan]

I heard it was rubbish, simply patched together from an old, abandoned manuscript she'd given up on long ago and finally published in the guise of a "novel" when she was too senile to obect. But I haven't read it personally...

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Read it and reviewed it on page 2 of this thread.

I think that the majority of the negative comments that followed the publication of Go Set a Watchman came from those who felt that they had been dispossessed of one of their literary idols. Not so much being dispossessed of HL - and the book does not have the same polish as TKaMB, probably because TC wasn't around to help - but rather having Atticus Finch tipped of his pedestal.

I thought it a cracking read, and although it was written before TKaMB, a perfectly reasoned sequel.

[rowan]

Yes, I read something about that. He became quite the racist in his old age or something. That's a strange direction to take. Still not inspired to read it though, I'm afraid.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Kemel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation. Published last year to a welter of acclaim, Daoud's debut novel has picked up a hat-full of awards including the Prix Goncourt. Taking Camus' The Stranger as its starting premise, Daoud tells the story of the murdered 'Arab's' brother. The book is good in parts, but I struggled with it as a whole - there isn't much of it at less than 150 pages, but it took me an age to grind my way through it. To be fair, It is 11 months since I read The Stranger, and I suspect that I would have gained a good deal more from The Meursault Investigation if the scene-setter were fresher in my mind. And if you haven't read the Camus, there's feck-all point in starting the Daoud.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Javier Marías' A Heart So White. Having recently read a book of short stories by this bloke (When I was Mortal), I was tempted to pick up one of his novels on my last trip to Foyles on Charing Cross Road; the instinct has done me well. There is a lot of stream of consciousness packed into A Heart So White, but rather than fogging the narrative, this simply serves to illuminate and enrich a pretty superb novel. It kicks off with a suicide, goes through at least one passage of hugely dubious eroticism (Time to go back on the bromide pills, I think) and ends up with a reveal that if not entirely unpredictable, turns out to be the best of a bad bunch of potential turns.

Highly recommended if you're looking to try something new.

[rowan]

Nearly finished Saramago's 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ' - and wouldn't recommend it. I'm not even sure why he bothered to write it. Unless I've missed something, the story simply tries to recreate the Biblical account with more detail and practical explanation, though without offering anything particularly imaginative or thought-provoking. Not exactly a masterpiece, nor even an original idea.

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Tom Kettle's The Ways of War. I must begin this review with an admission; I have for some several years been fascinated by the tragedy of Tom Kettle. A committed Irish nationalist, he was in Belgium in the summer of 1914 as the Home Rule crisis in Ireland appeared to be edging ever closer to civil war. His purpose was to procure weapons for the nationalist Irish Volunteers, but while there he witnessed first-hand the brutality of the German invasion. He determined to join the allies in fighting the scourge of aggressive Prussianism and for an Irishman that meant joining the British Army, and in Kettle's case a battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Despite being a member of parliament with a great deal to offer to the General Staff, Kettle chose to remain with his battalion until his death in the 16th (Irish) Division's successful attack on Ginchy in September 1916.

The Ways of War is not a memoire or diary of the trenches, though the opening chapter is a posthumous biographical sketch written by his widow. The remaining chapters are essays of varying length in which Kettle sets down the case for fighting a war against Prussian aggression and brutal expansionism. For any serious student of the Great War these essays offer a contemporaneous and therefore extremely valuable view that was shaped by the information available and the emotions prevailing at the time. It is refreshing to study arguments that have not been constantly turned over by the tired ploughs of revisionists and reactionaries.

My copy of the 1917 edition was originally owned and read by another soldier of the 16th Division in France in January 1918. His marginal notes are often as moving as Kettle's script. When Kettle's widow writes of the engagements at Guillemont and Ginchy, the reader has simply written, "I remember very well these two places." In early July this year, 2 months shy of the Centenary, I walked both of these battlefields. That note contains, for me, volumes of courage, horror and sacrifice.

As an officer in the last remaining Irish Line Infantry regiment of the British Army, I daily wonder at the service of proud and committed Irishmen who have served in the ranks of my Regiment and its antecedents over three and a quarter centuries. Some have been fortunate, but most of us have seen the ugly side of soldiering - and yet we serve. Kettle talks of this towards the end of The Ways of War when he says, 'Truly the scourge of war is more terrible, more Apocalyptic in its horror, than even the most active imagination could have pictured. When the time comes to write down in every country a plain record of it, with its wounds and weariness, the flesh-stabbing, and bone-pulverisisng, and lunacies, and rats and mice and maggots, and all the crawling festerment of battlefields, two landmarks in human progress will be reached. The world will for the first time understand the nobility, beyond all phrase, of soldiers, and it will understand also the foulness, beyond all phrase, of those who compel them into war.'

Spectemur Agendo