Just before Christmas I was sent a list of twenty-five books, all of which had been chosen for World Book Night (March 5th), when a million copies of the chosen books will be given away, free. I hadn’t read most of the twenty-five, so I decided I’d try to read all of them before the March 5th. I’ve read sixteen, so far, and these are my favourites:
1. AGENT ZIGZAG, by Ben McIntyre
This is the true story of a World War Two double agent; he
spied for both sides. It’s very exciting, often funny. If it was a novel you wouldn’t believe it, because some of what happens is so mad and far-fetched. But it actually didhappen. It starts with a woman talking to her future husband, the double agent, in a hotel restaurant. Two men walk in – the police. He gets up, and jumps straight through the glass of the hotel window. And that’s the last she sees of him for six years!
2. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, by Erich Maria Remarque
Another war book, World War One this time. It’s about a very young man’s life in the German Army – how he survives, the insanity of war, the endurance of friendship. It’s very simply written, in the present tense, almost as if he’s writing it while the bombardments and firing are taking place.
3. STUART, A Life Backwards, by Alexander Masters
This is the true story of a homeless man, told to the writer, Alexander Masters, who met Stuart on a street in Oxford. Stuart thought the first draft was boring, so he told Masters to tell the story backwards – from the time they first met, through – backwards – his times in jail, his troubles in school, his teen years, his childhood. He thought it would be a much better way of telling the story – and he was right. It’s shocking, funny, sad, terrifying an absolutely brilliant.
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