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.

September Meeting

This month we met at Rachel's where we ate far too many biscuits and discussed 'A Town Like Alice' by Nevil Shute.  In short, we loved it!  We chose this from the BBC's Big Read top 100 and it certainly deserves to be in the top 100.  We loved the language which really spoke of the 1950's era, how women couldn't be trusted with money until they're at least 45 - you couldn't get away with that nowadays. 

We felt the book had two definite halves, the first being the war story which was very evocative and beautifully written and the last half being of them meeting up again and building up the town.  Most of us preferred the first half and felt the book could have ended when they met again, but I liked the story of the small town booming, although it was rather twee and she had incredibly good luck.  In short, it was very much of it's time and showed that women could be clever and resourceful, even in the 1950's.

Result: 8/10 (I made that up as I forgot to get people to vote)

We chose our next book from the following:

• The Small Hand by Susan Hill
• Killing Floor by Lee Child
• The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay

We voted for 'The Small Hand' by Susan Hill which we will be reading for the November meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Jen's house on Wednesday 12th of October.