Fifty Great Short Stories by Milton Crane (ed)

This month's book was a little different, we chose 12 of the 50 short stories in this compact little book.  Details of the stories we read are in the previous post.  We had quite a good discussion about each story, some were, predictably, better than others but the standard was quite high across the board.  My favourites included:

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
Hunger Games - esque story of a nation where villagers gather for the annual lottery.  Well written story with a twist at the end.

The Giaconda Smile - Aldous Huxley
How could I fail to love anything written by this man!  Quite a long short story about a man who thinks himself a bit of one with the ladies and plays upon it.  One spinster takes him seriously with disastrous consequences.


How Beautiful with Shoes - Wilbur Daniel Steele
An American farming community is rocked by an escaped convict who kidnaps a beautiful local girl who mistakenly wears new shoes while running for her life - a mistake we've all made :-)

We marked this book a collective 6/10.

Our next book was chosen from:

• Tideline by Penny Hancock
• The Thread by Victoria Hislop
• Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh
• When a Crocodile eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
• Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

We chose 'Tideline' by Penny Hancock which we will be reading for the October meeting.

Our next meeting will be at The Warwick, 8pm on Wednesday 12th September.  Please bring a review of a book you'd like to read.

Empire by Jeremy Paxman

This month Louise fed us cake and tea (I'm sensing a theme) at her house where we discussed this month's book.  Hmmm, where to start? 

It provoked a lot of discussion about how proud we were to be British, how we felt we were represented to other cultures today and in the past and also how attitudes of British people had changed with regards to entitlement and blame cultures.  Most of this discussion wasn't directly related to the book, but it was interesting, we even got round to comparing the teenage pregnancy rates in our respective schools (apparently there's not much else to do in the country).  But the book was difficult to read, had no logical flow (it jumped about in time and space) and the wording so difficult to understand that you really had to read it a full chapter at a time (and the chapters were long).  None of us had finished the book, this is a first for this book group, and only a couple of us were interested in finishing it.  It felt and read like a text book, good if you were interested in the subject matter but painful if not.

Concept: 7/10 (we liked the idea of having a full history of the British Empire in a compact format)
Plot: 2/10 (however it jumped about all over the place)
Characters: n/a
Ending: n/a
Cover: 7.5/10 (good lion)
Page Turner: 1/10 (new category!)
Slap: Jeremy Paxman (though I doubt we'd actually dare)

Overall: 4.5/10

Again, we didn't need to chose our next book as we had already chosen 'There But For The' by Ali Smith a while back but it's only just come out in paperback.

We did choose the short stories to read from our next book '50 Great Short Stories' as we didn't think we'd manage all 50.  We chose 2 each and they are:

The Standard of Living - Dorothy Parker
The Shot - Alexander Poushkin
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe
The Other Two - Edith Wharton
Theft - Katherine Anne Porter
The Giaconda Smile - Aldous Huxley
The Chrysanthemums - John Steinbeck
How Beautiful with Shoes - Wilbur Daniel Steele
That Evening Sun - William Faulkner
The Tale - Joseph Conrad
The Man Who Could Work Miracles - H.G. Wells

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 8th August, 8pm at Copa Bar.  Please bring along a review of a book you'd like to read.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

This month we were treated to tea and cake at Rachel's house, thanks to Jen for her yummy cakeypops :-)

Sadly it was Dave's last meeting, so we subjected him to talking about waxing, childbirth and wedding planning - yes, that's actually what this book is about.  An autobiographical rant about feminism made all the more amusing by Caitlin's anecdotes about her bizarre family.  Once you are past the first chapter (lots of sex, periods and more sex) this book is quite good fun.  We liked her self-depreciating style and her explanation that feminism isn't about hating men, more about why women seem to accept that their life is very different to men's.

Concept: 6/10
Plot: n/a
Characters: 8/10
Ending: n/a
Cover: 8/10

We didn't want to slap anyone, well maybe the crap boyfriend ....

Overall: 8/10

We didn't choose our next book as we chose 'Fifty Great Short Stories' a while back but didn't want to have two short story books back to back.

Our next meeting will be at Louise's house (I think Louise offered, correct me if wrong) on Wednesday 11th July.  Again we don't need reviews for this meeting as we already have September's chosen.  Can you bring along your copy of 'Fifty Great Short Stories' to the next meeting so we can choose which stories to read (unless you'd like to read all 50).

As I said above, this meeting was Dave's last, he's moving away with a new job.  Good luck Dave and it's been great having you in our little group.  Sadly we also have to say goodbye to Shelley who is moving back to America, good luck to you too Shelley, we will miss you.  Stay in touch you two :-)

In other news, last night myself, Jen and Rachel braved Reading's finest brains in the Reading Library Mid-Summer Quiz, 80 questions on Sport, Books (only managed 3/10), Nature, Local, Jubilee, General Knoweldge and Geography.  We came a respectable 6th out of 8 with 45/80.  It was a fun evening and we shall we going to the Christmas quiz ... time to study local history and maybe a little on books too.