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It’s disappointing when you get to the end of a book and find you have little to say about it. I’ve had significantly less time for reading recently, mostly because I’m now working full-time again. I tend to spend my lunch-breaks reading, though, and over the last few weeks I’ve worked my way through Stella Gibbon’s 1932 novel, Cold Comfort Farm. Set on the bleak titular farm, the novel follows Flora, a city girl, who arrives to fix all her relatives problems.

It’s weird reading it today because the pastoral novels that it parodies are much less famous than the novel itself and so most modern readers, myself included, miss most of the references. Still, it’s readable enough and seems to be well liked, finishing 88th in the Big Read, the BBC’s 2003 survey of Britain’s favourite books. I have to concur – its story is enjoyable and it’s easy to appreciate the satire, if not the parody.