Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Tea and cakes at Jen's seemed like a suitable way to celebrate Valentine's week and we welcomed a new member to out midst, Lucy, who leaped right in playing lucky dip with Jen's soft porn version of 'Warm Bodies' and is also a knitter like me.  Welcome Lucy!

Kate, Jen and I saw the film version of this book last weekend and to be honest it made the book look good.  As usual the film missed loads out but it also changed the ending completely and the main character R seemed to have become a teenage heartthrob, yes we were confused too.

Overall we thought this book was averagely written, it was a good concept of a zombie love story and the nods to Romeo and Juliet were subtle enough to not be annoying.  However the ending was very predictable and we were more interested in a prequel to show us what happened to the world to get it into that state.

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 6/10
Ending: 7/10
Cover: 9/10 (very minimalist, very good)
Page Turner: 5/10
Who to Slap: Zombie wife (cheating by having zombie sex, very harsh)
Where's the Cheese: quote "I dream of an exclamation mark when all I have are ellipses ..." (will get the exact quote later and amend).

Overall: 7/10 (which doesn't seem to reflect how average we thought this book was)

We chose the next book with a random draw, the suggestions were:

• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• The Innocents by Francesca Segal
• 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James (come on, own up, who put this in?)
• HHhH by Laurent Binet

We randomly chose 'HHhH' by Laurent Binet which we will be reading for our April meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Susie's house, before she sells it, on Wednesday 13th March, 8pm.

Claus: The Legend of the Fat Man by Tony Bertauski

Our Christmas meeting was held at Hannah's house and it was a mini meeting of just 3 of us.

We liked this book, we thought the plot and the way it was written lent itself to being a film, it was a lovely festive story but we felt it was probably aimed at young teenagers because of the use of large font to emphasise passages and some of the phrasing.  It was an easy read but the editing errors let it down, very simple spelling mistakes which should never had made it to print made this book feel quite amateurish.  We liked the short chapters which meant it could be read in short bursts but some of them were just a page long and that added to the young feel of this book.

Concept: 9/10
Plot: 7/10
Ending: 6/10
Cover: 5/10
Page Turner: 6/10
Who to slap: The editor
Where's the cheese: How Santa Claus got his name

Overall: 7/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
• May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
• The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

We chose 'Warm Bodies' by Isaac Marion which we will be reading for our February meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 9th January, 8pm at Bar Copa unless someone wants to host.  As this is the first meeting of the New Year, we will be deciding on our Book of the Year 2012.