April Meeting

It's so nice to have sunny weather and meet in daylight again!  Six of us met in The Warwick (not The Warwick Arms as I previously thought) to discuss 'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diane Setterfield.  We mostly enjoyed this book with it's gripping story line and intriguing characters.  Lisa brought some discussion questions but they mostly went above our heads and we ended up discussing the characters in our own special way (Ros we missed you and your slapping!).  Everyone was still liking the book until we came to talk about the ending, it seemed a bit contrived and neat, all the bits were too nicely sewn up and it became a bit unbelievable.  After that we were a bit confused over whether we still liked it!  That's what I love about this book group, I can come to the meeting loving the book and leave with more to think about and vice versa.

Result: 5 of us enjoyed this book.

We didn't need to chose our next book as we've already chosen 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel, it won a vote ages ago but was only out in hardback, now it's in paperback, we've added it to our reading list.

Instead we discussed the meeting venue, it was suggested at our last meeting (at Lisa's house) that we might want to hold the meetings at people's homes instead of a pub in town.  After a long discussion, it was decided that we'll do half and half, we'll alternate between someone's house and the pub.  This means that we're not too dependant on people to volunteer their houses as our numbers are few and we want to encourage new members to join us at the pub meetings.  So at every other meeting we'll ask that someone hosts the next meeting, they just need to provide drinks (tea, squash etc) if anyone wants anything specific they can bring their own (this keeps the cost down for the host and makes things simple).  And we'll see how it goes.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 13th May, 7:30pm at my house.  I'll send out directions closer to the time.

We also discussed the blog name, you may have noticed it's changed.  When I started the book group, I lived in Lower Earley and we had several members who also lived there (or near there).  But now that I've moved and Ros has also left, we only have one member left in Lower Earley and we now meet in central Reading (well half the time) it seems silly to still be called 'Lower Earley Book Group'.  We're also hoping to improve our searchability of the blog so a name change was called for.  Hope you like it, any further suggestions welcome.

Enjoy the sunshine and happy reading.