I’m a member of a book club which meets every month to discuss a novel chosen by one of the members. I originally joined the club to broaden my reading experience. Left to my own devices I tend to end up reading Science Fiction.

This month’s book choice is a good example of this in action. I have already read three HG Wells novels; The War of the Worlds, the Time Machine, and First Men on the Moon. I think it’s easy to spot the theme here! However I didn’t realise that HG Wells also did comedy very well.

“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Kublai Khan is probably best known in the UK for the famous poetic fantasy by Coleridge. However the truth behind the legend of Kublai Khan is even more fantastic than the poem suggests.

Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan – and doubled it! His empire reached from the Pacific to the Urals, from Siberia to Afghanistan – 60% of all Asia, one-fifth of the world’s inhabited land area. He was perhaps the most powerful man who ever lived.

I have always been anti-TV. I love reading, so having a TV on in the room interferes with that. Whenever I watch a lot of TV, (more than an hour), I’m left with an empty, “what a waste of time” , feeling. I have never been able to put my finger on why I felt like this, until now.

The psychologist Oliver James has written a book called “Affluenza“, which is an analysis of the causes of depression in a materially affluent world. On page 284 he looks at the effect of TV;

The psychologist Oliver James looks at the modern world and tries to answer the conundrum;

“Why is it that despite the Western World being materially richer than it has ever been before, the middle classes are suffering from high rates of depression, anxiety, addiction and ennui?”

He examines the problem in different Capitalist cultures from the UK  and USA, to Denmark, Singapore, New Zealand and Russia.

Refreshingly he not only identifies the problem, he offers solutions for a cure on a personal level.  He also invokes a political manifesto at the end of the book, which he admits has not a hope in Hell of ever being implemented! 

The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears is set in France over three time periods at critical moments in history. The 5th century and the collapse of the Roman Empire, the 14th century and the arrival of the Black Death plague and the 20th century  with the second world war. 

This sounds interesting – and it is, however my advice to any new readers would be to skip the first 133 pages, and to start reading the book in ‘Part Two’. The first 50 to 60 pages are some of the most impenetrable and confusing narrative in literature. They would put you off if you attempted to read them, and they don’t really add anything to the novel.

Most readers gravitate to their favourite authors or subjects, so I end up reading science fiction a lot. I would like to be more widely read, but have a vague fear that it may be hard work.

Joining a book club was the solution for me. Luckily, Tracey at Spa Striders  started a book club last year and invited me to join.

We meet every 2 months, and take it in turn to host the club in our homes.  Each member picks a book; (any book – a completely free choice). The selections are then sent to each member, and we all read one book to discuss at the meeting.

Books are important to me, they are a guaranteed avenue of pleasure. However the first book I want to write about, is not a book at all – it’s a ‘graphic novel’; what most people think of as just a posh comic.

Graphic novels have come up in the world. They now have their own section in Waterstones book shops. If there is one graphic novel that will convince you of their artistic relevance it’s ‘Maus’. This is a personal history of Vladek Spiegelman a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, as told by his cartoonist son Art Spiegelman.