After a hard day in the Paddock, there's nothing like settling down with a glass of read and a good book. At the cubby house, we prefer electronic readers to paper. A few years ago, I decided to read all Booker Prize winning books. A task that has turned out to have expanded greatly. For example, after reading Salman Rushdie's brilliant 'Midnight's Children', I got sidetracked into reading everything he wrote - some more than once. And after hearing the pommy author David Mitchell on Radio National, I decided to expand to all short listed and long listed books. Then proceeded to read all David Mitchell's works.
Anyway, it got time to read Pat Barkers winner "The Ghost Road". Before starting, however, I found out that it was the third book of a trilogy starting with a novel called "Regeneration".
At about two thirds of the way through, I can tell that I will be going down the 'read everything by Pat Barker' road. Fantastic book. It is historical fiction based upon a WW1 soldier/poet and the psychiatrist who is treating him. The objective of the shrink is to get the poor bugger fit to go back to the trenches.
Not a cheery little tale, but highly recommended.
A quote:
“The way I see it, when you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a
contract. And you don't back out of a contract merely because you've
changed your mind. You can still speak up for your principles, you can
still argue against the ones you're being made to fight for, but in the
end you do the job.”
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