January Meeting

After some misunderstandings we missed the usual meeting and moved it to a week later.  We met last week to discuss 'Room' by Emma Donoghue, an eerie story told from the point of view of a 5 year-old boy who was born and raised in one room with his mother.  The book started off well, hinting at the truth so the reader isn't quite sure what is going on.  Why are they in the room?  Why does a man come in with groceries?  The sheer creativity of the mother to entertain her son was amazing, it teaches the modern world something about the imagination of children and how they don't need five million different toys, video games and TVs.  Towards the end of the book, the way the author makes sense of the world through a young child's eyes becomes a bit forced and it all seems a bit rushed.  But all in all a very thought provoking story.


We gave this 7/10.

We chose our next book from the following:

• The Hand That First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell
• Ours Are The Streets - Sunjeev Sahota
• The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood

We voted for 'The Year of the Flood' by Margaret Atwood which we'll read for the March meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Lisa's on Wednesday 9th February.

December Meeting

Oh dear, my dedication to this blog is waning, life seems to have got in the way.  I have no excuse, sorry people.  My notes from the Christmas meeting have gone walkabouts, so I'll wing it.

We discussed 'Born on a Blue Day' by Daniel Tammet, an autobiography by an autistic man about his childhood, relationships and his record-breaking attempt at reciting pi to thousands of places.  An interesting book which explains autism clearly and savant-ism (is that a word?).  But we found the tone of the book quite bland, it went into great detail about some aspects of maths but glossed over more interesting bits like his relationship with his boyfriend.  OK, ok, I know he's autistic and it's wonderful that he's written a book but it's not fantastic and I wouldn't read anything else by the same author.  Why do I feel the need to appologise for that?

We chose our book after next, 'Her Fearful Symmetry' by Audrey Niffenegger which we'll discuss at the February meeting.

Oops, almost forgot, we voted on the book of 2010 and the results were:

1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
2. The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas