When we drove to the south of France in the summer I prepared for a long, long drive. My brother lent me a book on CD, so I could listen as I drove. I’ve never been able to listen to books in the car before as I find the distances too short, I’m rarely in the car for more than an hour and that’s not enough time to get into the story. More than 10 hours in the car on the way through France however was perfect. It also got me an hour into the journey north at the end of the week too.

Life of Pi is a story of an Indian man, retelling a story of his youth (one of the nice things about the Audio CD was the accent of the narrator). His parents owned a zoo, they were moving to another country and the ship they were on sank. How interesting can a story be of a boy trapped on his own in a lifeboat? Ahh, I didn’t mention his friend “Richard Parker”. Richard happens to be a tiger, who also found himself on the lifeboat. It was a wonderful story, full of the unexpected and perhaps reason enough to travel to the south of France again (when else we I have that much time in the car). I find it hard writing about the books I’ve read as I don’t want to give away the story. This story is so unusual I can’t classify it as anything else other than a great read.

Interestingly while looking up the CD on Amazon for the image, Amazon recommended “The Time Travellers Wife” to go along with it. It seems my reading habits are predictable, I wonder if Amazon have a name for the type of books I’ve enjoyed reading? Maybe there are hundreds of other people out there liking and disliking exactly the same books.

I was given this amongst a pile of other books and it’s taken me a while to get around to reading it. I think I chose this over some of the others simply because of the name. “Gold Mine” sounds a little industrial as if technology is going to get mentioned. It does, a good dose of geology and the gold mining process with a few adventures thrown in. I say few adventures because the story covers several key characters. The hero, and his rise to running the company. The hero’s lover, who happens to be the wife of the villain. The villain, who gradually develops into the villain from being simply powerful but strange. The other hero who saves the day but loses his life, The greedy villain(s) who cause the suffering of many due to their greed. I haven’t mentioned a handful of other characters that set the scene and who are as good and bad as you find in every day life. Having chose this book, I’d be quite comfortably choosing to read another Wilbur Smith novel.

Boys all over the world dream of adventure. This story is the telling of an adventure for a boy who always wanted to go into space. Set in the future where there are space stations and colonies on other planets, young Roy wins a trip to a space station. Well written and entirely believable, this is a story that hasn’t aged a day since it was written (1954, a good read now as I’m sure it was then).