Thursday 2 July 2009

Books for a hot climate

It's ridiculous in London at the moment, plants in the garden are giving up the ghost, sleep seems impossible in the heat, and none of the infrastructure is at all designed to cope with this sort of weather - least of all the unassuming 3 bed Beckenham semi I call home.

So then surely my sanity is questioned by my cheerfull acceptance of a business trip to Madrid tomorrow - after all - chances are the temperature's not likely to be a whole lot lower there.

It's a fleeting visit, but one that holds the prospect, should Friday go well, of a rather more time than might be ideal at Madrid's quite nice Barajas airport - it's better than many others, but it's still an airport, and there's not a lot you can do about that.

This makes book choices really worth thinking about. I've got Mark Mills' "Amagansett", which will certainly be coming along, but what to bolster it with? Do I gamble on there being something worthwhile at the bookshop at Heathrow? Or do I revisit Charles Cumming's fantastic "Spanish Game" - topical given the location - especially as I like to be able to put some real experience of places to a novel? Hugh Bicheno's "Razor's Edge" has been a recent acquisition but for some reason I'm not sure I want to read it immediately, and of the fodder I saw at Heathrow last time round, the really appealing "Wolf" from Guilliat and Hohnen is one I'm hoping to write about professionally, thus buying it would be a waste.

If this is the largest cross I have to bear in July I'll be pleased - but please spare a thought for the dilemmas of what to cram into the world's smallest overnight bag...

Any suggestions gratefully received.


1 comment:

  1. Just a quick follow up - unexpectedly Hugh Bicheno won it - a quick leaf through first few pages this morning was enough to reveal the depth of quality in the writing - and his approach to the much written about Falklands conflict seems really refreshing.

    Will read with interest and look forward to blogging about it.

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