The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

Christmas seems like months ago and it was great to catch up with the girls at our usual haunt, most of us had read all of this book which is very good considering December is usually a busy month for everyone.  This book started of as a bit of a mystery around a disappeared professor but it turned into one of the most mind-tripping books I've ever read (in a good way)!  The discussions on quantum physics and philosophical topics left most of us struggling but if you glossed over those, this book was great.  It had a slow beginning but I was flying through it towards the middle and the ending came far too soon.  Some of the details seemed a bit contrived, for example to add a bit of danger the ex-FBI agents appeared and started hunting the main characters, but thinking about it, why didn't they go after their bosses or other people involved in the project rather than trying to track a book down across the world?  I liked the mix of love story and sci-fi but I was frustrated by the ending and after discussing it with my fellow book-worms it seems it could be taken several ways.

Concept: 9/10
Plot: 7/10
Ending: 7/10
Cover: 9/10
Page Turner: 8/10
Who to Slap: Drippy Heather
Where's the Cheese: Adam & Eve linkages

Overall: 8/10

We have changed the way we are selecting our books, instead of voting on them we are putting all suggestions in a hat (yes, we borrowed Jen's actual hat) and drew one out at random.  We are hoping this means that we get to read some random books which may not have won in a vote.  The suggestions were:

• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• A Dark Encounter by Roland Vernon
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• Prophecy by SJ Parris
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

We randomly chose 'Bel Canto' by Ann Patchett which we will be reading for our March meeting.

We also discussed our book of the year 2012, it came down to a tie between 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran and 'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovich, it went down to a final vote and 'Rivers of London' won!

Our next meeting will be at Jen's house on Wednesday 13th February, 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.

Above Average by Amitabha Bagchi

Novembers book group meeting was at Susie's house and we discussed 'Above Average'.  It was set in modern day India and followed the life of a middle-class student from school through to PhD in America.

We didn't like this book, we found it lacking in plot, full of cultural references to India which I'm sure would be funny if you were local to where the book was set but they went right over our heads.  We didn't really care about the characters and found it a struggle to finish the book and when we did we were disappointed by the ending, if you can call it that.  The only thing we thought had promise was the idea of writing a modern novel about the normal people in India, we've all heard of the poor and super rich and we were interested to hear about the average people.

Concept: 5/10
Plot: 3/10
Ending: 1/10
Cover: 2/10
Page Turner: 0/10
Who to slap: The Author
Where's the cheese: The uncomfortable passages where he read out his poetry about his girlfriend and her dark nipples.

Overall: 2/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• North and South by John Jakes
• The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
• House of Riverton by Kate Morgan
• The Lies of Loche Lamora by Scott Lynch
• Princess Bride by William Goldman

We chose 'The End of Mr Y' by Scarlett Thomas which we will be reading for our January meeting.