I’ve recently finished reading a series of good books and here’s a brief summary
Fragrant Harbour (sorry can’t remember the author at the moment) follows the stories of several people and how they end up in Hong Kong. The stories span around a century in the colony. It’s well written and kept me entertained throughout. The only flaw I felt was that I was required to remember a seemingly unimportant piece of information from the beginning of the book for the end to make sense. A very good book though.
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson - the one that was recently made into a film. It’s about Joe Simpson and his climbing partners struggle up and down a mountain. The story is quite remarkable as a little way down from the summit Joe breaks his leg, a little later his partner Simon is forced to cut the rope Joe is hanging from and leave him believing he’s dead. Quite a remarkable story of survival. I’d say it was more of a book for climbers as he uses some climbing jargon and talks quite a lot about morraines/other glacial and ice features. I liked it though as it manages to convey some of what it feels like to be in that sort of situation
and finally
Enigma by Robert Harris - I’ve already read and talked about one of his other books, Pompeii and Enigma is much in the same vein. The book follows a man called Tom Jericho who is part of the cryptanalyst team at Bletchly Park where the German messages were decyphered. The story’s interesting and much like Pompeii the historical information is amazingly detailed and (as far as I know) accurate. I didn’t feel the book was as good as Pompeii but that could just be me. If you’re interested in the code breaking during the war this is quite a good novel to read for a feeling of what it was like to be there at the time
So in summary - all three books were good. Whilst I enjoyed Touching the Void I wouldn’t unreservedly reccommend it to everyone unlike the other two. Told you it would be brief. All I have to do now is find something else to read now
