Thanks to everyone who came to this months meeting, 6 of us met in a very quiet Warwick Arms (makes a nice change) to discuss this months book 'The Story of Forgetting' by Stefan Merrill Block.
Thanks to Mary and Ros who brought some discussion questions which we kind of stuck to. We liked the symbolism of Isidora, a world were people forgot everything and it was a good thing, also when memories and speech came to Isidora at the same time Seth was doing his research and what the impact of both of these had on the inhabitants. We felt that Jamie's regression to childhood reflected the fact that that was when she was most happy, before her parents died and her uncle decided (on the day of the funeral!) to tell her he was her real Dad. We were split in deciding whether Abel was actually her Dad and whether they both new this by the onset of her illness. Most of us would want to know whether we had a disease like this which cut short your life at 35-40.
And all of us wanted to slap Seth's Dad for being generally useless.
Result: 2 people liked this book, 1 person was undecided.
We chose our next book from the following:
- Rabbit, Run - John Updike
- The Truth About Melody Brown - Lisa Jewell
- The Island - Victoria Hislop
- A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
- The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The next meeting will be in the Warwick Arms, Thursday 9th July at 7:30pm. Can whoever proposed 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' bring some discussion questions and can everyone bring a review of something they'd like to read?
To follow on about the discussion we've been having about borrowing books en masse from the library, Mary very kindly investigated this for us and we have to be even more organised to reserve the books we want. Our next book is not available until next year. I would suggest that if we wanted to borrow books then we need to pick a few from the library list and see when they are available. Then we can slot them into our book reading year. After a long discussion it was decided that this was more hassle than it was worth and that we would see how we go choosing books on a month by month basis. Most of the books we choose are available to borrow from the library on a personal basis anyway, so members don't have to buy a new book every month.
We also discussed going to see an open air theatre performance this summer, Ros and Lisa are investigating and I'll post any decision we make on here.
