August reading

I bought Testament of Youth way back in January and between the swings and the roundabouts didn't think to pick it up. To be honest I think its size scared me a little. It's hefty (600 or so pages) but the other evening with the rain dripping endlessly outside I lit the fire and started it. Of course Vera Brittain's writing is such that you get effortlessly sucked into her story, beginning with her early life and her battle to get out of provincial Buxton and into Oxford. Of course the Great War gets in the way of those plans and takes the lives of her brother Edward, her fiance Roland Leighton and their friends, creating the lost generation, and of course changing her life too. If the summer continues in its dismal way I shall have lots of fireside reading time - although I'm wondering should this be my August and September choice for The Year in Books and that way I can stop hyperventilating over its size...

reading

Last Friday I had my running away day. I run away occasionally but I don't go far. In fact I pretty much go to the same place- the bookshop and perhaps on to a nice cafe for a quiet coffee. I bought two books - A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli and Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain. One from the Second World War and one from the First. I'd previously read and really enjoyed Brittain's Letters from a Lost Generation and I'm hoping to read the book before I see the film but it mightn't work out that way. The other one - A Meal in Winter - is more bite sized (excuse that terrible pun) and at less than 140 pages is more of a novella. Set in the depths of a frozen Polish landscape three German soldiers are out hunting. Hunting for Jews. It's written from one of the soldier's perspective and is utterly, terrifyingly gripping. The writing style is clean and clear, precise yet simple and the descriptions of the cold and snow make me glad I'm reading it tucked up safely beside a blazing fire.