Keep forgetting to post on this thread. Had to dig for it, since searching for it is hampered by the King Alfred's Way threads (think about it) and the fact that 'what' 'are' 'you' and 'now' are too common to be used as search terms on here.
Anyway, I started "This Game of Ghosts" by Joe Simpson of "Touching the Void" fame. It's essentially an autobiography, with the theme of "how my friends have all died and how close I've come" running through it. He does not lack for content in this regard
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
I have to admit you can detect a hint of arrogance in his writing (perhaps it comes with the territory) but he's a genuinely engaging writer and has some pretty good stories to tell. I've had what I thought were sketchy bivouacs, but none of them ended with me dangling on a vertical face above several thousand feet of air from a rope tied round a bit of flaky rock all night while a helicopter rescued someone even more precariously clutching onto life.
I left that at my mum's so in the meanwhile I read "The Grapes of Wrath". Having not been in the office regularly for nigh on 18 months, I've been out of the habit of browsing the books in Oxfam at lunchtime, and for the first time in years, my to-read pile has diminished almost to zero (there's a couple of books on the shelf that, embarrassingly, I can't remember if I've actually read or not). The upside of this is that I've had to actually seek out the books I want to read, from the list that I keep adding to but rarely tick off. There's a few classics on this, and The Grapes of Wrath was one of them.
I have to admit, I wasn't expecting it to seem quite so relevant, or be so moving. I knew the rough synopsis, but hadn't appreciated the political thrust of it. At times it made me angry, other times depressed, but definitely worth reading.
I'm now onto wor Dave's "The Year". I can tell already I'm going to enjoy it. Not sure if I mentioned that Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder was my "leave around the house to be read in spare moments" book, as opposed to my "main" book which lives by the bed and only gets read at night. That role often involves lying around for months not being read, before my partner "tidies" it and I forget about it. Not so with OCCD - I seemed to find a surprising amount of spare moments, when previously I thought I had none, such is the nature of Dave's writing. It didn't last long before retiring to the "read" (past tense) shelf.