When I "blogged in" yesterday I had every intention of writing about books I have enjoyed but somehow my fingers just started typing something completely different. Perhaps this inability to follow one train of thought for more than a minute or two is something to do with my age - or maybe I was always scatterbrained!
My recent reading material seems to have been centred to some extent on World War I. I read All Quiet on the Western Front for the first time, then a book about a family of eight children - seven boys and one girl. All seven boys served in the army during the war, although the youngest got no further than his initial training before the armistice. Of the other six, five were killed and one suffered for the rest of his life as result of the wounds he sustained. The most recent was a book which was described as 'an oral history', though how a book can be called 'oral' is beyond me! Anyway, it was about life in Britain (the home front, as it was called) during the war.
When I visited the library yesterday I made a conscious effort to break the chain and came back with a novel by Ann Widdicombe (Member of Parliament and honorary Lion in Maidstone Lions Club), a book about the Kray twins (London gangsters in the 1960s) and another about life in London in Victorian times. I hope this last will give me an insight into the lives of some of my ancestors as there were a few who lived in London in the mid 19th century.
That, I find, is one of the problems with 'doing' family history. It can become a bit like train spotting, with just a list of names, dates and places. I want to know more about the people, their personalities and how they lived.
Well, I still haven't written about books I have enjoyed, but perhaps that will come one day.
Oh yes - the weather forecast was right. It is raining.
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