Never Trust A Rabbit by Jeremy Dyson

This month we were back at a rather busy Copa Bar to discuss 'Never Trust a Rabbit' by Jeremy Dyson, a collection of short stories from one of the writers of 'The League of Gentlemen'.

It's quite a dark, depressing book with only a few stories which had an uplifting outcome.  The stories ranged from curious twists to some with an 'is that it' ending.  In the introduction the author says that some of his ideas came from just putting two random words together and, to be honest, that would sum up this book, entirely random with flashes of inspiration.  As Jen put it, 'he has nailed the odd concept'.

We agreed on the best and worst stories: the worst being 'All in the Telling' and the best were 'We Who Walk Through Walls' and 'Love in the Time of Molyneux'.

Concept: 7/10
Plot: 5/10
Characters: n/a
Ending: n/a
Cover: 3/10
Slap: The author!

Overall Total: 5/10

After reading this collection of short stories, we decided to take a breather from them for the moment and so we will not be reading 'Fifty Great Short Stories' for June.  We will read this later in the year.

We chose our next book from the following:

• How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• Great House by Nicole Krauss
• Tinkers by Paul Harding

We chose 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran (sorry Dave) which we will be reading for the June meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 9th May, 8pm at Susie's house.  The theme for book reviews will be diamonds, in celebration of the Queen's Jubilee.  Be as random as you like.

Our book of the year 2011-12 was voted as 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovich

This month we met at my house to celebrate birthdays: Rachel's and our book group's!  Yes, we have been going for four years now!  Jen made a beautiful cake and while we all enjoyed it we discussed 'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovitch.

This book was a murder mystery/police/comedy/magic thing-a-mi-bob.  The main characters are two Met police officers who investigate magical mysteries, the style of writing is very relaxed, easy to read yet made us laugh out loud at points.  We loved the characters and the concept was very similar to the nursery rhyme mysteries by Jasper Fforde (who we also loved).  We did get a bit lost in the middle of the story where the action picked up and felt that the rivers plots was bolted onto the main murder mystery part, we preferred the murder bit anyway.

Concept: 9/10
Plot: 7/10
Characters: 9/10
Ending: 8/10
Cover: 8/10
Slap: no-one!

Overall Total: 8/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Fifty Great Short Stories by Milton Crane
• Solaris by Lem Stanislaw
• The Life of an Unknown Man by Andrei Makine
• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
• The London Train by Tessa Hadley
• War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

We chose 'The London Train' by Tessa Hadley which we will be reading for the May meeting.

Our next meeting will be at 8pm at Bar Copa.

I know that we voted on our book of the year 2011-12 at the last meeting but I've lost the bit of paper, can anyone remember who won?  I promise to be more organised soon :-)