In Which Votes Are Cast,Books Are Read Paul Theroux Is Writer As Hitman and Possibly Discovering Another Reader

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well as I'm writing this blog it's Saturday morning at 7:14am. Not only am I awake but astonishingly so is my daughter.

A couple of days back I cast my votes in the National Assembly elections for Plaid Cymru. Now we know that that Labour are the largest party. Plaid have progressed,albeit slowly. Still it is progression not regression and that is important.

Speaking personally I regret being unable (in a small way) to help Plaid,the party I'm now a member of during the election due to ill health. Hopefully I'll do better in the local council election and see whether the party can dent the incompetance that Labour currently rules Bridgend with.

The rise of UKIP in Wales is a disappointment. Suppose though that the politics of fear is powerful anywhere.

Well a number of books have been finished. The first one was the library book Spanish Swans by Pablo Gomez about the those Iberian players who helped in the rise of Swansea City. As the book went on like a mountain descent it started from a peak and went downhill into dullness from then on. Mainly because as the book progressed it did not tell me anything I didn't know already.

But then the realisation dawned on me that it wasn't the writer's fault or mine. This book was a translation from Spanish. So for the majority of the readers it was originally intended for it was all new. The mistake was publishing it in Britain.

Now the only other library book of the three I borrowed by Christopher Hitchens is wider than a brick so it was impossible to take to work. Visiting the library is impossible for me until Monday so another non Penguin book was needed to be plucked from the great unread.

This is the book I picked.

Andy Miller - Tilting at Windmills

This book is an account of the writer's attempt to shed a lifelong dislike of sport by taking up miniature golf. So far so good.

The Paul Theroux travel book The Pillars of Hercules is also finished.When I started it I'd described the author as a "professional" writer. This was I realise now wrong. The correct description of him is writer as hitman. Indeed if you look at early adult pictures of him he looks like an archetypal seventies assassin. Ready to kill some democratically elected politician before being foiled by Roger Moore and Tony Curtis.

For on the one hand he's cool,sophisticated and well researched. However he's equally cold,unemotional and self centred. Like a hitman you dislike the writer and what he produces. All my younger self prejudices against him came back as I was reading this.

So I need a new Penguin Paperback to read. This was picked from the great unread.

Kim Edwards -The Memory Keeper's Daughter 

When I mentioned on this Twitter I got a response from someone saying that it was one of the best novels she'd ever read. So all very encouraging then.

I'd bought this Penguin Paperback, which has the orange/white spine of their books published in America in a charity shop in Maesteg, Inside it though there was a calling card from a Kenneth Henry,Assistant Manager - Technical Training from New York. Well that card has an email address and I've emailed him. We'll see if he's a fellow reader. Hopefully he's still with us.

Until the next time.