Empire by Jeremy Paxman

This month Louise fed us cake and tea (I'm sensing a theme) at her house where we discussed this month's book.  Hmmm, where to start? 

It provoked a lot of discussion about how proud we were to be British, how we felt we were represented to other cultures today and in the past and also how attitudes of British people had changed with regards to entitlement and blame cultures.  Most of this discussion wasn't directly related to the book, but it was interesting, we even got round to comparing the teenage pregnancy rates in our respective schools (apparently there's not much else to do in the country).  But the book was difficult to read, had no logical flow (it jumped about in time and space) and the wording so difficult to understand that you really had to read it a full chapter at a time (and the chapters were long).  None of us had finished the book, this is a first for this book group, and only a couple of us were interested in finishing it.  It felt and read like a text book, good if you were interested in the subject matter but painful if not.

Concept: 7/10 (we liked the idea of having a full history of the British Empire in a compact format)
Plot: 2/10 (however it jumped about all over the place)
Characters: n/a
Ending: n/a
Cover: 7.5/10 (good lion)
Page Turner: 1/10 (new category!)
Slap: Jeremy Paxman (though I doubt we'd actually dare)

Overall: 4.5/10

Again, we didn't need to chose our next book as we had already chosen 'There But For The' by Ali Smith a while back but it's only just come out in paperback.

We did choose the short stories to read from our next book '50 Great Short Stories' as we didn't think we'd manage all 50.  We chose 2 each and they are:

The Standard of Living - Dorothy Parker
The Shot - Alexander Poushkin
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe
The Other Two - Edith Wharton
Theft - Katherine Anne Porter
The Giaconda Smile - Aldous Huxley
The Chrysanthemums - John Steinbeck
How Beautiful with Shoes - Wilbur Daniel Steele
That Evening Sun - William Faulkner
The Tale - Joseph Conrad
The Man Who Could Work Miracles - H.G. Wells

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 8th August, 8pm at Copa Bar.  Please bring along a review of a book you'd like to read.