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

July Meeting

We had a good meeting yesterday - there was only 4 of us (Lisa, Mary, Jen and Rachel) but we did a lot of talking, not all about the book... Quite a lot about travelling and bizarre toilet experiences! Don't ask!!

Anyway, back to the book, it was 'The Adamantine Palace' by Stephen Deas. I think everyone enjoyed it - some of us were surprised as we were new to fantasy novels. We found that we were more excited about what would happen next rather than what actually happened in the book. There was plenty of speculation about which characters would would feature most in the sequel and whether Prince Jehal will get his come uppance. We did feel that there could have been more detail and description about the world and the various realms. We also thought there could have been a bit more character development - although some of the characters started to become more real towards the end. Overall, the book felt like a long prologue to the next book in the series! Most of us thought we might read the next book - Mary has already bought it! And it was certainly easier to read than Wolf Hall :-) So it gets a thumbs up from all 4 of us.

The next book was chosen from:

• A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern 
• Hearts & Minds by Amanda Craig 
• The Sun Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova 

We chose 'A Place Called Here' by Cecelia Ahern which we'll be reading for the September meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 12th August, 7:30pm at Warwick Arms.

May Meeting

This month we had our first regular meeting at a members house, I think it went really well.  We drank a lot of tea and I mean a lot, but it did mean my tea pot and milk jug got some use.  In between the tea we discussed 'The Shack' by William Paul Young.  I think it's fair to say that most of us came to the meeting not particularly liking the book but it provoked a great discussion.  The American religiousness grated on some but if you ignored that, it was quite an interesting story about a man discovering god and we discussed what religion means to us.  Gail helpfully explained some of the more technical details about the holy trinity which I still don't understand but don't mind.  We discussed this book for a good few hours which surprised us all, it tends to be the more controversial and the less we like the book, the longer it our meetings become.

Result: 6 of us were undecided, we wouldn't necessarily recommend it but didn't hate it either.

We chose our next book from the following:

• London Lore: The Legends and Traditions of the World's Most Vibrant City - Steve Roud
• The Adamantine Palace - Stephen Deas
• One Morning Like a Bird - Andrew Miller
• Enders Game - Orson Scott Card

We chose 'The Adamantine Palace' by Stephen Deas which we will read for the July meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 10th June, 7:30pm back at the Warwick Arms.