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 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
For some of us, the choice of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 afforded an opportunity for a spot of “time travel”, back to the 1960s and 1970s. Revisiting the novel took us back to the extraordinary decades in which we grew up.
Continue reading Catch 22 – H3a Reading Group Review, 5 October 2011
 Three Cups of Tea (or Deceit?)
By Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
Coincidentally, the decision to read Three Cups of Tea was taken just four days before an American television programme was aired which cast doubt on some of the accounts in the book, and raised serious questions about the behaviour of Greg Mortensen and the Central Asian Institute which he helped to form.
Continue reading Three Cups of Tea – H3a Reading Group Review
 The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy’s first, and to date, only novel. It won the Booker Prize in 1997 and was all but buried beneath a tsunami of praise when it first appeared. Amongst the reviews of this book, certain words keep coming round, words like ”lyrical”, “lush”, “witty”, “rich”, “affecting”,” intricate”, “poetic”. Continue reading The God of Small Things – H3a Reading Group Review, 2 November 2011
 From the Holy Mountain
by William Dalrymple
Dalrymple’s journey in the shadow of Byzantium starts at the Monastery of Iviron, Mount Athos, Greece, on 29 June 1994, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Inspired by The Spiritual Meadow he is to follow in the steps of the author John Moschos, a 6th century traveller monk. The journey takes him from Mount Athos to Constantinople and Anatolia, then southwards to the Nile and thence to the Great Kharga Oasis in Egypt, once the southern frontier of Byzantium. Continue reading From the Holy Mountain H3a Reading Group Review, 6 March and 13 April 2011
 by Paul Torday This was a first novel by Paul Torday, published in 2007 when he was 60. A quick straw poll of the members of H3A English Reading Group revealed that everyone had enjoyed the novel and most would strongly recommend it to friends.
Some felt, on hearing the title, that it would be something like A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel byMarina Lewycka; in other words some of us anticipated the title to have, at most, only a very tenuous link with the story. However, with this delightful book, what you get is what it says on the cover….. and so much more!
Continue reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
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