Departures and Arrivals - Eric Newby

Newby's 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' is possibly my favourite travel book ever but this collection of short pieces from the other end of the author's writing career is much more uneven. In many of the items, the author's distinctive style comes through with clear and engaging depiction of the scenes and action but several of them seem to be rather damp squibs that don't really get going at all. The first piece, about growing up in Barnes, and the description of a journey through Syria are especially fine. So, not vintage Newby but worth a detour all the same.

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Under the Greenwood Tree - Thomas Hardy

The first and, by some way, the shortest of the Wessex novels shows that the special tone of these books was fully in place right from the start. The story is relatively straightforward and the feel-good ending achieved without major threat but Hardy's great theme of the crossing of social boundaries is already present in the love affair between the carter's son Dick and the gamekeeper's daughter Fancy. There is none of the brutality that figures in the finales of 'Tess' and 'Jude' and the lack of bitterness behind the writing makes for a more enjoyable read.

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The Barber of Seville & The Marriage of Figaro - Beaumarchais

Now mostly famous for their inspiration of opera masterpieces by Rossini and Mozart, these two plays are (in John Wood's translation for Penguin Classics) highly readable and thoroughly entertaining in their own right. In his introduction, the translator draws parallels between the character of Figaro and that of his creator and it's Figaro's resourceful and determined challenging and outwitting of the established order of the day that drives the action of both plays. Great fun!

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Blackbird Singing - Paul McCartney

It's perhaps a pity that many of McCartney's song lyrics, written for the Beatles and subsequently, are intermingled among the pure poems in this collection. For me, at least, the poems struggled for impact in that exalted company and would have made more of an impression on their own. The writing is sincere, often well crafted and, at its most successful, touchingly direct but I didn't once get a sense of that touch of genius that frequently marks out McCartney's song writing.

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