A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Hmm. This was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Hmm. An interesting book, certainly, and I did not know about the Ukrainian famine and the hardships faced by Eastern European families as described here ... but, I feel there has to be a but! Perhaps there was too much hype surrounding the book. I couldn't say that I didn't enjoy the book, but compared to the feeling I have when a book has to be devoured, or the exquisiteness of Cold Comfort Farm, or the romanticness of Jane Austen, or the magic of Jostein Gaarder ... well, I suppose it's like comparing a kebab to a gourmet three course meal. Perhaps I just didn't "feel it", as my pupils would say.

I had wanted to read this for a while, and eventually bought the book in a motorway service station shop as part of a "buy one, get one half price" offer, when my husband was buying another book.

Right. The next one will be on the 1001 Books list ...

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

An exquisite book.

What was the "something nasty" Aunt Ada Doom saw in the woodshed?

(I feel that I should also add that much of this was read on the tube recently, and when we went to the cinema I carried on reading until the lights went down. Very funny, very unusual. A funny/strange feature: it is said "in the near future" - it was written in 1932, and at one point a character refers back to a 1942 war. What is funny is that you are not conscious of this normally - if anything, it has a real twenties/thirties feel about it - but every so often there's a strange anachronistic feature, such as "he dwiddled the dial on his picturephone" (that's not an actual quote, by the way!) or the "airpost". Anyway, other than that, this is a great book. Not bad for £2.49 at Oxfam ... As I said - exquisite.)