July Meeting

This month we discussed 'Smut' by Alan Bennett at my house with lots of biscuits :-)  It was a short book comprising of two stories of seemingly normal surburban lives with quite a lot of smutty business.  The narative really draws you in, not a word was spared, the characters were really well developed and most of us read each story in one sitting which is testament to how easy they were to get involved with.  The every day language and wonderful terms brought the characters alive and we really identified with them.

Result: 9/10

We chose our next book from the BBCs Big Read list, a list of 100 books nominated by the nation.  We went through the list and found several which none of us had read, out of these we chose a few which we liked the sound of:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
• The Shell Seekers - Rosamunde Pilcher
• Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

We voted for 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute which we will be reading for the September meeting.

Our next meeting will be at the Warwick Arms on Wednesday 10th August.

May Meeting

A farewell meeting to one of our founding members, Gail, who is moving to London to a fab new job.  To remind her of what she's leaving behind we had a 'Reading' themed meeting, filled with beer and biscuits.  We have also welcomed two new members over the past 2 months, Dave and Ruth - welcome and I hope you enjoy our meetings.

We also discussed this month's book 'So You Think You Know About Britian' by Danny Dorling.  A book packed with facts about Britain and interesting statistics.  A few of us didn't finish and felt it was a phd thesis crammed into a book, but others really enjoyed it using the facts in conversations and to spark debates.  An usual choice which provided lots of discussion.

Result: 6/10

We chose our book from the following:

• The Yacoubian Building - Alaa Al Aswany
• A Dark-Adapted Eye - Barbara Vine
• Perfume - Patrick Suskind
• The Boy with the Top-Knot - Sathnam Sanghera
• The Distant Hours - Kate Morton
• Smut - Alan Bennett
• The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde
• The Left Hand of God - Paul Hoffman

We voted for 'Smut' by Alan Bennett, it's not out in paperback until 2012 so it's dependant on our members if we read this in hardback or not.  I'm waiting to hear back from everyone and will update you soon.  If we don't read it, our second choice is 'The Yacoubian Building' by Alaa Al Aswany.

Our next meeting will be at the Warwick Arms on Wednesday 8th June, 8pm.