Book Five

Ladies and Gentlemen. I give to you Book Five.




















This, apparently, is what they call a "Classic". "They" being literary geniuses or those whose job it is to stack the "Classics" shelves in bookshops.

Anyway, it is clearly obvious that I am no literary genius. So maybe you are wondering how this book became number five on this little reading mission of mine.

Well, when I was Salta, in Northern Argentina, we were hanging out with Shane, an Irish guy, who some of you will be familiar with if you you read my blog updates from South America. He is a huge bookworm and is one of those clever people who can multi-task whilst reading, rather like "The Machine". Whilst in Salta he suggested that we go to the cinema and see this film. Now, I had no bloody idea who Truman Capote was. Shane said that he had written "Breakfast At Tiffany's". I thought that was a crap song by a crap band, not a book. Anyway, Shane said that the guy who played Capote in the film won an Oscar for his performance, so I thought I'd give it a watch. And the cinema we were in was pretty cool, one of those old-school ones with comfy seats, a huge screen, lots of dust and no-one in there at all except us. Watching a movie in there was like being in a movie. Unfortunately the sound quality was quite poor though.

I thought the film was pretty good. It follows Capote as he did his research for his book, "In Cold Blood", a true story about the Clutter family murders in Kansas, in 1959. It was interesting stuff.

So I guess that's how I came to reading the book. Having seen the film about the author, and seen how writing the book had affected him so much, I thought it'd be worthy of a read. And it was. I really enjoyed it. It took me a while to get through it, but that was mainly because "The Machine" was visiting and unlike him, I can't read and hold a conversation at the same time. Apart from the first third of Book Three, at 335 pages long, this work of non-fiction was the first real test in this read-athon of mine. I thought it would drag on a bit but it didn't. I'm interested to see what "The Machine" makes of it as he had started to read it before he came here. But he read four different books whilst he was here. You see, that's another one of his talents (and Shane's for that matter). He can start one book, put it down, and then read another (or more) and go back to the original book without getting confused. Incredible.

Anyway, "Well done me" for reading this.