Living Better

by Alastair Campbell

I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

I had heard of it a little while ago, when I first read about Campbell’s mental illness.  And more recently, listening to the excellent The Rest is Politics podcast, I was reminded of it again and decided to download the audiobook, which I listened to on a recent visit to Devon (including multiple train journeys).

The book is read, as you might expect (and would desire) of an autobiography, by the author.  his wife also reads a postscript which she has written.  It has given me great insight into mental illness, and how one individual has managed to live with it.  I think everyone who has come up against mental illness of any kind, in their own life or in that of someone close to them, should listen to this.

Not sure what else I can say.  Some of Campbell’s recipes for better mental health are well known, but still bear repeating.  He has a multi-point plan for tackling it which could be neatly boiled down to just five points, encapsulated in the Five Ways to Wellbeing promoted by mental health charity Mind and the NHS, among others.  Personally, I find five points easier to remember than Campbell’s ?fifteen ?twenty – but that’s me.

Read this, whatever you may think of the man and his work.

The Way we Live Now

by Anthony Trollope

I don’t have a lot to say about this book.  I have read it in the past, and seen the excellent TV production starring David Suchet as Augustus Melmotte.  So the story was well-known to me.

I have though this the best of Trollope’s books, but now I am not so sure.  Perhaps it is just my familiarity with the story that dulls the edges a bit.

Anyway, it remains true that Trollope’s characters and their behaviours are so quintessentially human, and political, that they defy age.  The personal: Lady Carbury and her wastrel son Sir Felix.  The business world: Melmotte the unscrupulous and fraudulent entrepreneur. The political: MPs who have neither the brains nor the integrity to do their jobs.  Only our ‘hero’, Sir Roger Carbury, seems to be too good to be true…

The Old Man and the Sea

by Ernest Hemingway

Ah, Hemingway!  Who doesn’t love to read this guy?  I downloaded the (short) book on Kindle, read it over two days and relished every sentence.

This was our book group read for the meeting held in our garden in early July.  My husband joined the group, and enjoyed the discussion – adding his own little anecdote “the old man and the pizza” about an encounter with some seagulls on Weymouth seafront the previous weekend.  The group is nothing if not jovial, and generous.  Reading the books is the least part of our activity.

I also have a collection of Hem’s short stories on Kindle, and dip into these now and then.  There are times when a good does of Hemingway is just the ticket…