Howards End

No wonder this book is often on the school syllabus. It is full of material for deep discussion and analysis.

The Wilcox family are wealthy with old-fashioned views. Mr Wilcox and his sons take the moral high ground and frown on the bohemian Schlegel sisters and their views on emancipation and patronism. The sisters befriend Mr Bast, a clerk, who also enjoys reading and music - seeing them as a way to raise himself from his lowly position.

This is one of the classics of modern English literature. A perfect book. The story puts the class system under the microscope and highlights its fallacies. If we could all Only Connect it would avoid misunderstandings. In the end Mr Wilcox is exposed as a hypocrite, and Mr Bast is crushed, quite literally, by culture. E.M. Forster decries the destruction of the traditional english landscape and the industrialisation of the cities. His language and descriptions are wonderfully warm and the text is filled with ideas and metaphor.

John Carter

The Book

The Princess of Mars is the book upon which John Carter the film is based and this was the first of a series of books featuring the American Civil War hero by Edgar Rice Burroughs, written before Tarzan fame. 

Amazon: "Virginia gentleman John Carter, unexpectedly transported to the perilous red planet, Mars, finds himself captured by the loveless Green Men of Thark. As Carter struggles to win his freedom—and the affections of fellow captive Dejah Thoris, princess of the rival clan of Helium—the fate of the entire planet hangs in the balance: warring Martian tribes collide and the beleaguered Atmosphere Factory grinds to a suffocating halt."

The Rum Diary

The Book

Hunter S Thompson's only novel is still autobiographical and written from the point of view of a journalist. Write about what you know, I guess.

Paul Kemp, the protagonist, is a 30 yr old journalist who gets a job on a newspaper in 1960s Puerto Rico. He introduces a reportage staff of drunks and jaded hacks on a paper that seems to always be on the brink of folding.

From Russia with Love

Have just finished this Ian Fleming classic. It is a gritty, simple story with the first half not featuring Bond at all, but introducing the world of SMERSH and it's assassin, tasked to kill James and bring about shame on the British secret service. I wish they would go back to the original novels and remake them again as part of the franchise, as I can never see why they had to make them so much more brasher. Sexism aside, the book has some great set pieces and clever plotting and has a ring of based on truth about even the more outrageous moments such as Russian Rosa Klebb attacking Bond with poisoned knitting needles. The films steadily got more away from the down to earth spy stories and into the fantastical melolomaniac plots of world domination and destruction, but this one is sensible and sticks more or less to the original. The main exciting difference between the two is that the book ends on a cliff hanger, with Bond succumbing to the poisoned stab of Klebb's knife boot.