things change

South of the Northeast Kingdom by David Mamet is a gentle ramble through the author’s memories of Vermont. It’s a short, pleasant read and is one of a series of National Geographic books by prominent writers on the art of travel writing. However I can’t decide whether the ragged edge of the pages is due to a blunt guillotine or is intended to convey some sort of earthy, rural effect!

A Foreign Country by Francine Stock – I just lost interest by the fiftieth page.

Dancing with Eva by Alan Judd is a great read. Two elderly people remember the last days in Hitler’s bunker and the events that followed. Dark secrets are revealed, leading to a tense ending. A highly recommended novel.

I’m wondering whether my book-buying strategy is flawed!

I’m a great fan of buying second-hand books from the Oxfam charity bookshops. They get my money, I get a cheap read, and I can, as I sometimes do, donate the book back to Oxfam so that they can get even more money from the same book. And I gift-aid it too!

My strategy is to hang on to books I think are either worth re-reading or are worth passing on as recommendations, but to return books that I haven’t enjoyed. However, if every Oxfam book was processed by its reader in the same way, eventually all the good books will have been sold and retained, and all the not so good books would have been returned to the shelves. So eventually Oxfam books would only be the not-so-good reads.

This might explain why I’ve had a spate of not-so-good reads recently!

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – I gave up after 30 pages.  Based around life in an office,  I didn’t find it ‘painfully funny’  I thought Mucho Mojo by Joe R Lansdale was a bit flimsy and predictable, though it gets good reviews on Amazon.

The Lives of Ants by Laurent Keller and Elizabeth Gordon tells you everything you want to know about ants, and is highly recommended. As is McSweeney’s 23, a collection of mainly American short stories. This was a present all the way from New York, so thank you Lucy! I enjoyed the stories so much I downloaded McSweeny’s 32 onto the iPad for 69p!