April Meeting

Thursday 9th April - Warwick Arms, Reading.

Thanks to everyone for coming to our second meeting, 10 people in all! Even though we choose the busiest mid-week night of the year (Thursday before Good Friday), we managed to have a very interesting and thorough discussion on 'The White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga.

It was decided that this was a really thought provoking insight into the dual world of India, the poorest of the poor alongside the richness of Delhi. We couldn't decide whether Balram was insane (he seemed happy to justify the brutal muder of his boss) or did what he needed to do (to get out of the 'darkness'). One member had found that his Indian workmates thought the book rather realistic which surprised a few of us who had assumed that this view was rather polarised. We also discussed whether we would read another of his books or whether he would be a one-book-wonder and also how representative book awards are of how good a book actually is.

Result: 9 people liked this book, 1 person was undecided.

We chose our next book from the following:

• When Will There Be Good News - Kate Atkinson
• The Story of Forgetting - Stefan Merrill Block
• Brodeck's Report - Philippe Claudel
• The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite - Beatrice Colin
• The 19th Wife - David Ebershoff
• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• The Outcast - Sadie Jones
• The Warrior's Princess - Barbara Erskine

We chose 'The Story of Forgetting' by Stefan Merrill Block.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 14th May, 7:30pm at Back of Beyond pub on Kings Road. This venue will hopefully be quieter and have a big table we can all sit around.

Other things decided were:

• The person who proposed the chosen book would bring a list of questions (your own or from the internet) to prompt the discussion.
• I will bring a list of bookclub books which my local library (Lower Earley) has in stock. We will see if any books take our fancy and include those in our list for choosing the next book. This would mean we don't have to buy the book instead I would borrow all the copies, hand them out at the meeting and gather them back at the next meeting.
  

If I missed anything out or you'd like to add anything, please feel free to leave comments. Hope you all had a good Easter and I'll see you in May!

March Meeting

Our first meeting was last night, it was lovely to finally meet everyone and we had a good old natter. As I discussed at the meeting, this blog is open to the world so if you do add any comments, please don't include any personal information. If you feel the need to share personal stuff, please join the facebook group 'Lower Earley Book Group' which is a closed group and only members of it can see the wall and discussion board.

So, here's what was discussed and decided on:

• Choosing The Book - Everyone will bring a review to the meeting, read it out and we'll take a vote on each book (you can vote for more than one book). The book with the most votes wins! We will try to choose books from a different author each time. If a book had been read by one or more members then it's up to those members to say whether they would mind reading it again. We won't restrict books by genre, so if you want to read poetry, biographies, new fiction etc, just bring along a review. We will choose paperbacks as opposed to hardbacks, to reduce the costs. I will investigate with the local libraries if they will order in copies of our book after next to save people buying a new book every month. At each meeting we will be choosing the book after next, so we chose 2 books this meeting: one for April and one for May's meeting. At the next April meeting we will choose the book to be read for June and so on. This means we all know what book we're reading next so you can skip every other book if you don't have time to read one book every month, or if you just don't fancy the next book.
• Hosting Meetings - We will be meeting each month in The Warwick Arms at 7:30pm.
  
• Frequency of Meetings - Meetings will be held on the 2nd Thursday of each month, so the date for the next meeting is Thursday 9th April and the one after that will be Thursday 14th May.
  

At each meeting there will be an opportunity to discuss the above and we can change anything which isn't working out.

The following books were submitted:

• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
• The Secret History by Donna Tartt
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant
• The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
• Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
  

We will be reading 'The White Tiger' for 9th April and 'Three Cups of Tea' for 14th May. As I said above, I will contact a few libraries and see if we can get some copies of 'Three Cups of Tea', if you'd like a copy please let me know either in the comments below or email me by 19th March (next Thursday).

So, again thanks to everyone for coming, I had a great time. I'll see you all in April, please bring a new review and your thoughts on 'The White Tiger'.