High Altitude Reading

Back from 4 glorious days walking in the Dolomites and, thanks to the Kindle with its integrated light in my rucksack, I was able sneakily to read late at night and early in the morning in my narrow bunk in the high Alpine huts where we stayed (a sort of very vaguely nostalgic student experience involving shared rooms, towels the size of flannels, and queuing for a coin operated shower).  Sebastian Faulks' A Week in December, set during the lead up to the banking crisis and featuring Notting Hill dinner parties, hedge funds, a seedy book reviewer (some baggage there, Mr Faulks), teenagers experimenting with drugs and Islamic extremists, was an incredibly inappropriate book to read in the crisp clean air and isolation of the mountains - definitely wrong time, wrong place.  However, it is worth the read and is an enjoyable, if a little contrived, canter through contemporary London. Besides which, I like the familiarity of books about London (and this is not Richard Curtis picturesque London but, at least in parts, a rather grittier version). Equally inappropriate for the setting of the Dolomites is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2009. Set in Australia it contains much sex, swearing, stubbies and opinionated characters...... but if you can get through that, it is a thought provoking read about how one act of domestic violence (the slapping of a child at a family BBQ) reverberates through a community