January Meeting

Happy New Year!

We are entering the third year of our book group (three in April to be exact), how time flies!

This month we finally gave up on the Warwick Arms, it has turned into an eat-y pub so we skipped over the road to Copa Bar again which was nice and quiet.  We discussed 'Bed' by David Whitehouse.

An easy read with short chapters which were perfect for reading in short bursts.  We mostly liked this book - kind of - instead of this being a story of a man in bed it was more about the relationships around him and how his actions affected everyone.  I liked the way the brother was never named, which both threw the focus back on Malcolm yet not on him (I don't think that makes sense but I don't know how else to say it), everyone was defined by their relationship to Malcolm which begs the question, what would happen when he died?  We felt the characers could have been developed more, for instance, what role did the Dad have apart from building the massive winch?  No-one in the book was normal, yet I suppose a book about normal people would be quite dull.  Our biggest gripe was the ending, it was very sudden and didn't really conclude anything.  We had a really good discussion on this one, so much so, we came up with a new scoring system:

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 4/10
Ending: 4/10
Cover: 9/10 (due to textured buttons and collar on PJs - thanks Rachel)
Who we would most like to slap: Mother

Overall Total: 6/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Solar by Ian McEwan
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
• The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh
• The Life by Malcolm Knox

We chose 'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovitch which we will be reading for the March meeting.

Our next meeting will be at someone's house (volunteers please) on Wednesday 8th Feb and our next theme will be Easter (as we'll be choosing the book to be read over Easter), please be as inventive with this theme as possible.

December Meeting

This month we celebrated Christmas at Lisa's and all admired her new kitchen - very posh.  We also had nibbles and a lovely goodie bag from Lisa filled with sweeties.  We then got onto the business of discussing 'Major Pettigrew's Last Stand' by Helen Simonson. 

I think we all generally liked this book, I loved the language and imagery used throughout, I could really picture the scenes and we all thought it could be easily turned into a film.  The characters were on the whole quite stereotyped, a bumbling old man, the Asian lady oppressed by her family, a greedy son etc.  The story was lovely, a real feed good tale with a suitablly happy ending although we thought the cliff scene a little over the top but necessary for the gun story line.

Result: 7/10 (again I forgot to take a vote, so I've made this up based on our discussion)

Our next book was on a horror theme, we chose from the following:

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
• Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews
• Watchers by Dean Coontz
• The Best Short Storied of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
• Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
• House of the Hanged by Mark Mills
• Dracula by Bram Stoker

We chose 'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin which we'll be reading for the February meeting.

Our next meeting will be back at the Warwick Arms on Wednesday 11th January 8pm.

November Meeting

This month's meeting was at Jen's house, and we'll be having lots more meetings at her house if the snack were anything to go by ...

These are cakey pops, cake mixed with buttercream and coated in chocolate and they are yummy.   The green rectangles on top of the pops on the right are actually books which are really detailed, see more of Jen's work at her website CakeyPigg.

Anyway, back to the books.  We discussed 'The Small Hand' by Susan Hill, a short, spooky book about a ghost child who links to a mysterious past.  The general consensus was that this book was either too short or too long.  For a proper length novel the characters could have been developed more, especially the strange old lady or for a short, short story a lot of the story could have been culled including the unnecessary book buying stuff.  I forgot to get a mark out of 10, so I'm guessing ...

Result: 5/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Bed by David Whitehouse
• The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
• Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
• The Interogative Mood by Padgett Powell
• Bangkok Eight by John Burdett

We chose 'Bed' by David Whitehouse which we will be reading for the January meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Lisa's house (in her new kitchen) on Wed 14th December.

We decided that our next theme will be horror, so please bring some reviews of horror books which we will read for the February meeting.