June Meeting

Back in the Warwick Arms, six of us gathered to discuss 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel.  It was a rather difficult book, both long and confusing, we thought the writing style wasn't very clear with the author not making the speaker clear, jumping about in time and swapping the names of the characters between their personal names and their titles.  But we still enjoyed it.  It was an interesting take on a popular era describing Tudor life from Thomas Cromwell's point of view.  We thought that his early life could have been expanded upon but understand that not much evidence can be found for it.  The inter-play between Cromwell and Anne Boleyn was interesting, both being manipulators and both being confined by their breeding (Cromwell) or gender (Boleyn).

We chose our next book from the following:

• One Day by David Nicholls
• A Dark Enchantment by Roland Vernon
• Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov and George Bird
• The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
• Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh

We chose 'The Earth Hums in B Flat' by Mari Strachan which we'll be reading for the August meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 8th July, 7:30pm at Rachel's house, I'll send out directions nearer the time.

April Meeting

It's so nice to have sunny weather and meet in daylight again!  Six of us met in The Warwick (not The Warwick Arms as I previously thought) to discuss 'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diane Setterfield.  We mostly enjoyed this book with it's gripping story line and intriguing characters.  Lisa brought some discussion questions but they mostly went above our heads and we ended up discussing the characters in our own special way (Ros we missed you and your slapping!).  Everyone was still liking the book until we came to talk about the ending, it seemed a bit contrived and neat, all the bits were too nicely sewn up and it became a bit unbelievable.  After that we were a bit confused over whether we still liked it!  That's what I love about this book group, I can come to the meeting loving the book and leave with more to think about and vice versa.

Result: 5 of us enjoyed this book.

We didn't need to chose our next book as we've already chosen 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel, it won a vote ages ago but was only out in hardback, now it's in paperback, we've added it to our reading list.

Instead we discussed the meeting venue, it was suggested at our last meeting (at Lisa's house) that we might want to hold the meetings at people's homes instead of a pub in town.  After a long discussion, it was decided that we'll do half and half, we'll alternate between someone's house and the pub.  This means that we're not too dependant on people to volunteer their houses as our numbers are few and we want to encourage new members to join us at the pub meetings.  So at every other meeting we'll ask that someone hosts the next meeting, they just need to provide drinks (tea, squash etc) if anyone wants anything specific they can bring their own (this keeps the cost down for the host and makes things simple).  And we'll see how it goes.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 13th May, 7:30pm at my house.  I'll send out directions closer to the time.

We also discussed the blog name, you may have noticed it's changed.  When I started the book group, I lived in Lower Earley and we had several members who also lived there (or near there).  But now that I've moved and Ros has also left, we only have one member left in Lower Earley and we now meet in central Reading (well half the time) it seems silly to still be called 'Lower Earley Book Group'.  We're also hoping to improve our searchability of the blog so a name change was called for.  Hope you like it, any further suggestions welcome.

Enjoy the sunshine and happy reading.

March Meeting - 1 year anniversary!

It's hard to believe that it's one year ago that we all crammed into my lounge and met for the first time!  Our little book group has been going for 12 months and I'd like to say thank you to everyone who comes to the meetings, everyone on the mailing list and everyone who reads this blog.  Without you, this group wouldn't be possible, so here's to another 12 months and another 12 exciting books to read!

We met last week at Lisa's house (thanks to Lisa for hosting and for making cake).  It was a pot luck night and the theme was British desserts in honour of Ros who was leaving for a new life and job in Washington.  Everyone brought a dish and we had some scrummy food while we discussed 'The Adventures of Sherlock Homes' by Arthur Conan Doyle.  It was a selection of short stories which were originally published in the Strand magazine in the 19th century.  A few of us had read Sherlock stories before but most of us were new, we liked the shortness of the stories which made them easy to read in short bursts.  The language wasn't as flowery as I expected and I found it quite easy to read and enjoy.  We all liked this book and would read more of his stories (short ones or novels).

Result: All 7 of us liked this book.

Unfortunately the massive amounts of cake and chocolate I consumed during the evening left me unable to write down which books we chose from (sorry).  But our next book is 'The Shack' by Wm Paul Young.  One of the books we chose a few months ago has come out in paperback so we decided to read 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel for the June meeting.

We all enjoyed holding the meeting is someone's house rather than the pub so we're going to discuss doing this for all meetings at the next meeting in April.  We'll hold the next meeting (Thursday 8th April) at the usual Warwick Arms but have a think about how sharing the venues across several people's houses would affect the meetings.

Finally, as I mentioned above we've lost one of our founding members, Ros to the great US of A.  We wish her all the best in her new job and look forwards to being invited to have a special book group meeting over in Washington.  We will miss you Ros, you've provided some great discussion points (mainly who you'd slap in each book) and your sly use of colleagues to pick out book reviews so you don't have to is second to none.