Paul Torday’s “The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers”
-“hugely readable” – Sunday Times
– “for all its lightness of touch. Torday’s novel gives a strong impression of the callous indifference that moving around big sums of other people’s money tends to entail” – Times Literary Supplement.
I was given this book for Christmas, by someone who knew how much I had enjoyed his “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”. It did not disappoint, and I read it from cover to cover in the past two evenings, and found his sardonic humour infectious on what is a very accurate picture of the callous indifference described by the critic above.
While you are at it, I recommend “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” as an absolutely hilarious account of the bumbling ineptitude of a barely fictitious Ministry of Overseas Development’s attempts to curry favour with a Third World dictatorship. I laughed so hard at times, it hurt.
What can you recommend to us, as a good read, which you have read recently?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Just finished ‘Almost Moon’ by Alice Sebold. Good story and well written.
It is based on the 24 hour period after she kills her mother and the unwinding that occurs after this
(PS Not a light heated read, as you may imagine)
If you like autobiographies, I’m reading ‘Wait for Me’ by Deborah Mitford (Duchess of) Devonshire. She writes without ‘side’ to reveal how her privileged life has been no cake-walk. Famous names appear and disappear just like the friends you and I have had.
I will add them to my “To be read” list, although Pseu, I had never imagined that matricide would make a good topic for a book, but a cracking good first line shows promise of an interesting read…”When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.”
Janus, the Mitford sisters were all such eccentric characters, and having seen a longish interview of Deborah in a documentary about someone else, I shall look forward to reading it.
Hi CWJ, I have heard very good things about Salmon Fishing, so am determined to read it. An excellent book is “Finest Years” (Churchill as Warlord), by Max Hastings. Gives a very new and frank perspective. What a great man he was, but so flawed too. In fact everybody is shown sporting numerous warts. Very easy reading. It needs to be for me.
I picked up “Wait for Me”, but it felt a little too close to home. 😉
Sipu, 🙂
Sipu, there is a film planned for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – I can hardly wait! I believe it will star Ewan McGregor, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emily Blunt, and is due out next year, I think.
I am halfway through Bill Bryson’s “At Home” which I would also recommend as an enjoyable and interesting read.
I shall keep a lookout for the Max Hastings work. We visited Chartwell a few years ago, which brought Churchill as a person very much to life.
I like travel writing and two of my favourite authors are Jonathan Raban and Paul Theroux. Just finished Dark Star Safari and starting to read My Secret History.
‘Matterhorn’ by Karl Marlantes, a decorated Vietnam Vet who has written this work of fiction which absolutely drips and smells of the jungles he and his buddies had to live, fight and sometimes die in.
There is no moral message here, just young kids trying to survive and stay safe until they can return home.
You could tag it with ‘rights of passage’ as the green lieutenant changes from the virgin into the cynical, hard bitten combat Veteran.
Unputdownable.
OMG and Jazz: Thanks for those to add to the reading list. The Old Patagonian Express was the last Theroux travel book I read – it gave a wonderful picture of the various countries he travelled through in South America and the characters he encountered.