Sofa Spotlight - The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling

If you've been following you will know that I enjoyed my first experience of Rudyard Kipling's writing in Captains Courageous. So although I do not in any way enjoy Disney's version I did want to read this book. (And not just because the cover had a picture of a tiger).

My first mistake was to think that this was a book with two novels. I was three stories in before I realised that it was a collection of short stories. Not being a fan of the short story I was frustrated, but as I was reading on a train I couldn't really express that frustration. Part of my annoyance came from the fact that I was enjoying the stories about Mowgli and I wanted to read more of those.

Thinking that I wasn't going to like the rest of the book I was close to losing interest. But I kept going and found my favourite short story of all time, 'Rikki-tikki-tavi' which was a story about a mongoose that protects a colonial family from a pair of cobras.

So although I wasn't sure at the start this is a book that I found to be a good read. The lesson I learnt from it was - read the blurb first!