World Book Day

The first, `Blood River' I've just finished, the second `The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read', I've almost read through once and `The Point of Rescue' I'm nearly ready to start. It seems a somewhat eclectic choice!

I was loaned `Blood River' by my work colleague John, who had really enjoyed it. It's a biographical account of the journey Tim Butcher made along the Congo river in Africa, one of the most dangerous places on the African continent. The Foreign & Commonweath Office provides this advice about travel in the DCR:

We advise against all travel to eastern and north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This includes entering DRC from Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. The only exceptions to this are within the town of Bukavu and Goma, where we advise against all but essential travel. You should avoid entering or leaving DRC overland except via Goma or Bukavu. This is due to continued insecurity and lawlessness in these areas.

I'm not too sure what I feel about `Blood River'. At one level he reminds me of those fifteen year old boys who step out into the road with such great faith in their own immortality. You end up thinking that there is something not quite all there in their brains. What I find most disturbing is that he probably put the lives of the people who helped him in danger. I hope the charities that employed the motorbike riders were well rewarded. Still, on the plus side, I finished the book and it has alerted me to a country in Africa where previously I had very little knowledge or interest.

The other two books are on loan to our book group by Barnsley library and I hope that the very great financial difficulty that Barnsley faces doesn't affect their ability to supply us with books. We have several elderly people in our group who certainly couldn't afford to buy their own.

I've almost finished the Susan Hill, `The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read' and I think it's brilliant. I don't usually like short stories, but I love these. I suppose they are less stories and more episodes in the lives of people. There is such an eloquent simplicity in the telling, yet the language she uses conveys so much. In many ways the telling is like poetry.


And then, racing along the water's edge, away and away, with their backs to the fish stall and the deckchair, suddenly they forget her, and a great and wonderful brightness entererd them and lifted them up and the brilliance of the day and the expanse of silver sea dazzled them and the whole feeling somehow entered deep into them, it went into their eyes and was absorbed by their skin, it became part of them and their memories and even, somehow, of their souls, so that now kneeling across the open leather hat box in the darkness, the feeling washed up over them, transfiguring them again.'

I can picture this scene in my mind so clearly. These are the kinds of short stories that I want to read again for the sheer pleasure of the images that the words conjure up.

And finally the one I haven't read, `The Point of Rescue', I'mhoping it will be a good read.