ARTWORK AND REVIEW FOR JANUARY 'ARTFUL READERS'

                  MY FIRST 'ARTFUL' BOOK OF THE YEAR

Positives 

• This was a successful 'in-betweener', easy reading and light-hearted,  the kind I like to read between more serious books.
• I read it in just a few hours in my coffee breaks - it's one of those books I keep meaning to put down and then find myself well into the next chapter and into the next coffee break.
• It's unlike anything I've read before, beautifully daft, tongue-in-cheek, great fun, with a bit of black humour.
• Cleverly alternates between the present and past, with the great idea of the hundred-year-old-man acting as an unlikely catalyst in events of world importance.

Slightly less positive aspects - but not really negative ones

• As with most books, there are a few slow, patchy or repetitious pages, but it's well worth getting through those for the entertainment of the rest of the book.
• Perhaps readers much younger than me may not know of all the historical people and events, and may not enjoy those sections as much as I did.  Yes, there is a flavour of 'Forrest Gump' in there.
• Disappointed that I finished it so quickly - I'll read it again!

ARTWORK INSPIRED BY THYOMWCOOTWAD

     

As children my sister and I drew simple comic strips, and later I drew them for my young kids.  This story was so visual that I kept seeing it as a comic cartoon.  OK, elephants aren't pink, but grey elephants would have looked very dull, and given the quantities of alcohol imbibed in the story pink ones seem appropriate. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it.