Recess Week Reading
Recess week is always a good opportunity to catch up on some reading – at least in the evenings. As this recess week also coincides with the Hay Festival there has been opportunity, just as when I hold surgeries in Hay, to browse in the book shops and buy ever more books for my bulging and sagging bookshelves in Cardiff and Aberystwyth.
Inspired by Jimmy Carter’s visit and his speech, I delved into my dog eared copy of ‘The Man From Plains’ which I had actually bought at a bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts when I was in the States when he was President. What comes across is the deep Christian belief and the serenity of Jimmy Carter, just as it did in meeting with him and hearing his speech at the Hay Festival.
A very different political figure was Barbara Castle, and I have just finished reading the authorised biography of her by Ann Perkins ‘The Red Queen’. Barbara Castle is in many ways, and perhaps surprisingly, a mirror image of Margaret Thatcher – passionate, a committed conviction politician who did not crave popularity but certainly courted controversy.
On the fiction side I have read the latest Alexander McCall-Smith in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series set in Botswana – The Miracle at Speedy Motors. McCall-Smith can really conjure up the beauty of sub-Saharan Africa with its massive skies and endless plains, and the kindness of the people of Botswana.
I am now reading Douglas Hurd’s ‘Image in the Water’. Douglas Hurd is actually a very good wordsmith and has written some good fictional, political books and this appears to be no exception.
I have also bought the latest James Bond ‘Devil May Care’ by Sebastian Faulks. This promises to be the best post-Fleming offering of James Bond with the possible exception of Kingsley Amis’ ‘Colonel Sun’.
sanddef said on May 30th, 2008 at 3:33 pm:
I’m currently enjoying the new Bond book myself. Many thanks to the BBC for shamelessly advertising it on the news earlier this week.