August Meeting

Back in the Warwick Arms this month, 6 of us met to discuss 'The Earth Hums in B Flat' by Mari Strachan.  A story about a 13 year-old Welsh village girl set in the 1950's.  A very easy read narrated by Gwennie so sometimes the dialogue was a bit simplistic.  We wondered whether Gwennie was quite 'all there', she seemed very young for a 13 year old and her obsession with flying was a bit odd.  Some of us thought the storyline was slightly contrived and a tad annoying, but others liked the story immensely so a real polarisation of opinion. 

Four of us gave it the thumbs up.

We chose our next book from the following:

• The Road Home by Rose Tremain
• The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

We chose 'The Road  Home' by Rose Tremain.  We'll be this for the October meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 8th September, 7:30pm at Louise's house.  I'll send out directions nearer the time.  This will be our first Wednesday meeting, thanks to everyone who decided to move the day of the meeting to enable me to keep coming as I'll be attending an evening class on Thursdays from September until May.

The book we will choose at Louise's will be read for the November meeting so we decided to have another themed book.  Our theme will be Halloween, please bring a review along this theme, it can be as tenuous as you like.

July Meeting

We had a good meeting yesterday - there was only 4 of us (Lisa, Mary, Jen and Rachel) but we did a lot of talking, not all about the book... Quite a lot about travelling and bizarre toilet experiences! Don't ask!!

Anyway, back to the book, it was 'The Adamantine Palace' by Stephen Deas. I think everyone enjoyed it - some of us were surprised as we were new to fantasy novels. We found that we were more excited about what would happen next rather than what actually happened in the book. There was plenty of speculation about which characters would would feature most in the sequel and whether Prince Jehal will get his come uppance. We did feel that there could have been more detail and description about the world and the various realms. We also thought there could have been a bit more character development - although some of the characters started to become more real towards the end. Overall, the book felt like a long prologue to the next book in the series! Most of us thought we might read the next book - Mary has already bought it! And it was certainly easier to read than Wolf Hall :-) So it gets a thumbs up from all 4 of us.

The next book was chosen from:

• A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern 
• Hearts & Minds by Amanda Craig 
• The Sun Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova 

We chose 'A Place Called Here' by Cecelia Ahern which we'll be reading for the September meeting.

Our next meeting will be on Thursday 12th August, 7:30pm at Warwick Arms.

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.