Book Club

Three cheers for the excellent service  from Cumbria Library for Reading Groups.  Last month’s read -  selected by the library was the Book Smugglers.... was a bit heavy , rather too many Middle Eastern names to keep track of who was who.    But an interesting statement of the prejudiced views of the European adventurers in the 1800s who searched for Timbuktu assuming the locals would be uneducated savages.  In fact the Malians have written records on all subjects going back to medieval times. They possibly have the oldest written records in Africa.   The history was interwoven with the tale of how all these ancient texts were smuggled out of the city when jihadists invaded Mali in 2012.  Interesting subject but too much detail.
 
Our next read is a mix of fiction and fact in a tale of the psychological impact of fighting in the trenches on the young men who fought in the First World War. That’s not going to be a light read either and I chose it.