Life Changing and Regret Reading!

PERSPECTIVE / LIFE CHANGING
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)
This is, above all, the wonderfully integrated stories of men and women living in a world of public oppression and private longings, a world in which history may be rewritten overnight and in which love may fall victim to either political intrusion or personal betrayal. (Sourced TBC)

BOOK I WISH I NEVER READ!
The Sea ( John Banville)
Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past? --Barry Forshaw (Is this the Source?)

Biography and Love

BIOGRAPHY
Titanic Express (Richard Wilson)
Forgiveness is not a popular concept these days. Instead, we seek justice, compensation and, often, revenge when others have done us wrong. These were the immediate goals of Richard Wilson when his 27-year-old sister, Charlotte, was murdered by rebel gunmen in Burundi in December 2000. A VSO worker in neighbouring Rwanda, Charlotte had been travelling on a bus - the Titanic Express of the title - with her Burundian fiancé, Richard Ndereyimana, when the attack took place. As well as the couple, 20 other passengers were robbed, stripped and then killed in cold blood. Titanic Express begins with an account of Wilson's battle to find out how his sister died, and to bring the perpetrators to justice. Foreign Office officials and the Metropolitan police officers assigned to the case are among the obstacles he has to surmount. More than once, he contemplates commissioning someone with a gun in Burundi to do to Charlotte's killers what they did to her. As his investigation unfolds, however, Wilson makes contacts with other aid organisations in Burundi, foreign journalists and exiles from its corrupt political system and ethnic tensions between Tutsis and Hutus - the same animosities that caused the genocide in Rwanda in 1995. In the process, he becomes an expert on Burundian politics - a microcosm of the problems that continue to afflict parts of post-colonial Africa. Movingly, he goes beyond a desire for revenge to develop an understanding of why Charlotte's killers did what they did. Yes, they were heartless murderers, but something had happened to make them like that. In violent, hopeless societies, everyone and everything is infected and degraded. It is not an easy personal journey. Wilson continues to struggle with a more primitive reaction even late in the book, when he meets a BBC World Service journalist from Burundi who has close links with the rebel group behind the attack. But his honesty carries the reader with him. Intimate books charting an individual's quest only work if the author is prepared to show himself, warts and all. This Wilson does unflinchingly. He also goes beyond the particular to ask broader questions about grief. It is a messy, painful, isolating experience that society today is reluctant to acknowledge or support. In his anguish, Wilson speaks to and for all who cannot easily put loss behind us and get on with life as if nothing has happened. (Sources TBC)


LOVE
The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history?all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered. Roy captures the children's candid observations but clouded understanding of adults' complex emotional lives. Rahel notices that "at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside." Plangent with a sad wisdom, the children's view is never oversimplified, and the adult characters reveal their frailties?and in one case, a repulsively evil power?in subtle and complex ways. While Roy's powers of description are formidable, she sometimes succumbs to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the pace of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers coalesce magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told. (Sources TBC)

Historical and Enlightenment

HISTORICAL
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Written between 1919 and 1926, this text tells of the campaign against the Turks in the Middle East, encompassing gross acts of cruelty and revenge, ending in a welter of stink and corpses in a Damascus hospital. Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains--like its enigmatic creator--brilliant and controversial. It describes, in the words of E. M. Forster, 'the revolt in Arabia against the Turks, as it appeared to an Englishman who took part. Round this tent-pole of a military chronicle T. E. has hung an unexampled fabric of portraits, descriptions, philosophies, emotions, adventures, dreams. He has brought to his task a fastidious scholarship, an impeccable memory, a style nicely woven of Oxfordisms and Doughty, an eye unparalleled . . . a profound distrust of himself, a still profounder faith.' 'The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.' (Sources TBC)

ENLIGHTENMENT
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Milan Kundera)
A touching and sad novel, it is the story of the painful love affair of Tomas and Tereza, condemned by fate and choice to live together, yet never ceasing to cause each other enormous pain and suffering. Tomas, a surgeon living in Prague just before the famous 1968 Spring uprising, is an incorrigible womanizer, unable to resist his unending stream of meaningless sexual flings. Tereza is drawn to him, sent to him by fate, like Moses in a bulrush basket. Tomas' constant infidelities numb her with pain; yet her unending love and need draw her to him inexorably, and he to her. From the text of a Beethoven composition he takes the line: "Es muss Sein" (it must be). He even leaves the safety of Switzerland to follow her back to Prague, sealing their fate to that oppressive regime following the Russian takeover. We also meet Sabina, Czech artist fascinated with aspects of incomparable images in which the interface of the images betray one another. In her own life, including her love affairs with Tomas and Franz, she is the eternal betrayer, not unlike the tensions in her own paintings. Franz is the idealist, the man who dreams the dream of the great march of history toward some better state and ends up being killed in a trivial mugging while in Thailand on a large but failed humanitarian venture. (Sources TBC)

Crime and Nostalgia

1.CRIME
In Cold Blood (Truman Capote)
Controversial and compelling, "In Cold Blood" reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly drawn by Capote, are shown to be reprehensible yet entirely and frighteningly human. The book that made Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative. (Sources TBC)


2. NOSTALGIC
I'm Not Scared (Niccolo Ammaniti and translated by Jonathan Hunt)

AND

The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood (Elspeth Huxley)
In 1913, at the age of six, Elspeth Huxley accompanied her parents from England to their recently acquired land in Kenya, "a bit of El Dorado my father had been fortunate enough to buy in the bar of the Norfolk hotel from a man wearing an Old Etonian tie." The land is not nearly what its seller claimed, but Elspeth's parents are undaunted and begin their coffee plantation. Her mother, a resourceful, adventurous woman, "eager always to extract from every moment its last drop of interest or pleasure," keeps an eye on Elspeth's education but also allows her extensive freedom. Through Elspeth Huxley's marvelous gift for description, early twentieth-century Kenya comes alive with all the excitement and naive insight of a child who watches with eyes wide open as coffee trees are planted, buffaloes are skinned, pythons are disemboweled, and cultures collide with all the grace of runaway trains. With a free-wheeling imagination and a dry wit, she describes the interactions of Kikuyus, Masais, Dutch Boers, Brits and Scots, mixing rapid-fire descriptions with philosophical musings. It is a mixture that suits her land of contrasts and unknowns, where vastly different peoples live and work side by side but rarely come together, like an egg beater whose "the two arms whirled independently and never touched, so that perhaps one arm never knew the other was there; yet they were together, turned by the same handle, and the cake was mixed by both. (Sources TBC)

Travel and Humour

1. TRAVEL
The City of Djinns (William Dalrymple)
Sparkling with irrepressible wit, City of Djinns peels back the layers of Delhi's centuries-old history, revealing an extraordinary array of characters along the way-from eunuchs to descendants of great Moguls. With refreshingly open-minded curiosity, William Dalrymple explores the seven "dead" cities of Delhi as well as the eighth city-today's Delhi. Underlying his quest is the legend of the djinns, fire-formed spirits that are said to assure the city's Phoenix-like regeneration no matter how many times it is destroyed. Entertaining, fascinating, and informative, City of Djinns is an irresistible blend of research and adventure. (Sources TBC)


2. LAUGHTER
Are you Experienced ? (William Sutcliffe)
Dave travels to India with Liz hoping to get her into bed. Liz travels with Dave wanting a companion for her voyage of self-discovery. This novel is a satire about backpackers.

Top 5 Books

1. Don't Let's Not Go To The Dogs Tonight (Alexandra Fuller)
Intensely moving and even delightful journey through a white African girl's childhood who grew up during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five learned how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill.

2. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Milan Kundera)
This is, above all, the wonderfully integrated stories of men and women living in a world of public oppression and private longings, a world in which history may be rewritten overnight and in which love may fall victim to either political intrusion or personal betrayal.

3. From the Holy Mountain (William Dalrymple)
Following in the footsteps of Orthodox monks who travelled fourteen hundred years before him, Dalrymple embarks upon a journey through Turkey, Syria, Beirut, and the West Bank to the ancient Egyptian cities of Antioch and Alexandria before encompassing what was once the Christian empire of Byzantium.

4. The Riders (Tim Winton)
The Riders tells the story of Fred Scully, an Australian who has spent the past few years living in London, Paris, and the Greek Islands with his wife & daughter. It follows Australian on a nightmare journey through Europe in search of a wife that has disappeared without explanation.

5. The Shark Net (Robert Drewe)
Both an unforgettable account of the author's coming of age and a haunting anatomy of a serial killer, The Shark Net is a magnificent evocation of boyhood pleasures and dangers, on the white sands of Australia's western coast.