Top 3 Hospital Books!

As you know, Mr T has just spent 24 days in two different hospitals. Being a true Scot, he was not tempted by Patientline, the bedside provider of TV! Radio! Telephone Calls! Internet Access! whose equipment (tiny screen and telephone on giant swivelly-arm thing) graces every bedside. And whose services cost £10 a day.

No, he read books. Lots and lots of books. Luckily, Penpont Tea Room has a bookcase where people can deposit their unwanted books, and other people can then buy them for a mere 50p donation per book (all proceeds to Help for Heroes). So I mixed it up a bit for him, from literary fiction to genre fiction (crime, spy and sci-fi mostly) to some factual stuff. You may be glad to hear that Wilbur Smith can still hold his own, but Craig declared nearly all the crime novels 'pish' (and most of them had won a gold or scarlet dripping dagger at least) and saved the adjective 'execrable' for the thriller Ice Station, by Matthew Reilly. In fact, with quite a lot of the recent 'popular' novels I picked up for him, he was genuinely astonished that they'd made it to publication at all.

So what were his top three hospital books? Results below...

No. 1

No difficulties at all in choosing first place - English Passengers, by Matthew Kneale. This won the Whitbread in 2000, and was shortlisted for the Booker. Although in essence a 'message' book - focusing on the decimation, by the British, of the aborigines of Tasmania from the 1830s onwards - it is character-driven, with the story told over two different timelines, and by about 20 different people. It's also got some great comedy amidst the tragedy - Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his Manx sailors are brilliant comic creations, and the voyages to and from the Antipodes are some of the stand-out chapters for me. In fact, I nearly agree with husband in giving this the Number 1 slot.

No. 2

In second place, The Magus, by John Fowles. I love this book, though it is infuriating and entrancing by turns. Probably very much a product of its time (written in 1966) it's basically the story of a young man who you wouldn't like very much going to a Greek island and having a series of unbelievable experiences that lead him (very, very, very eventually) to some degree of self-knowledge. Would have been my Number 1. Apart from the Wilbur Smith's.

No 3.
Actually, this looks quite good, as I really struggle with those climbers who walk past dying people on Everest in order to summit themselves. But I haven't read it. Mr T says, 'Good, but dense'. Probably only for climbing fans or serious cultural historians.

And he really did survive without daytime television or access to the internet. Minor miracles indeed. Do you remember when there used to be a television room on every ward? So patients could actually talk to each other...