Quote:
Originally Posted by cuffy
Just started reading, The first casualty, Ben Elton.
Will give my thoughts on this as and when i finish it.
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Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Didn't think i was going to like this as A) Not a great lover of Ben Elton.
B) I was half expecting his comedy style to come out in the book...couldn't have been further from the truth.
An absolute blinding book, very well written, keeps you gripped from the 1st to last chapter. Highly recommended.
Also just finished "Blood River" by Tim Butcher. Again, Fan-bloody-tastic.
Blood River, subtitled
A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart is an account of the journalist Tim Butcher's attempt in 2004 to follow the route first travelled by Henry Stanley in 1876 - 1877. This gripping book, complete with photographs, etchings and hand-drawn maps, charts Butcher's progress along the Congo River, Africa's largest river, from Lake Tanganyika in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west.
This is not an uplifting book, but it is a revealing one. It challenges the complaisance of the west not by ranting, but by presenting a picture of how badly broken the “heart of Africa” really is, and how this detrimentally affects the continent of Africa as a whole. The book raises questions rather than answering them, and the resolution of Butcher's journey is certainly not mirrored by any pretence of resolution for the Congo, but that is as it should be for a travel book which reveals more than the reader is comfortable with knowing about the enormous problems of a forgotten state.