December Meeting

This month we celebrated Christmas at Lisa's and all admired her new kitchen - very posh.  We also had nibbles and a lovely goodie bag from Lisa filled with sweeties.  We then got onto the business of discussing 'Major Pettigrew's Last Stand' by Helen Simonson. 

I think we all generally liked this book, I loved the language and imagery used throughout, I could really picture the scenes and we all thought it could be easily turned into a film.  The characters were on the whole quite stereotyped, a bumbling old man, the Asian lady oppressed by her family, a greedy son etc.  The story was lovely, a real feed good tale with a suitablly happy ending although we thought the cliff scene a little over the top but necessary for the gun story line.

Result: 7/10 (again I forgot to take a vote, so I've made this up based on our discussion)

Our next book was on a horror theme, we chose from the following:

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
• Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews
• Watchers by Dean Coontz
• The Best Short Storied of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
• Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
• House of the Hanged by Mark Mills
• Dracula by Bram Stoker

We chose 'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin which we'll be reading for the February meeting.

Our next meeting will be back at the Warwick Arms on Wednesday 11th January 8pm.

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.

October Meeting

This month we were self-evicted from the Warwick Arms as it was too busy, instead we chose the nearby Copa Bar which was a lot quieter.  We discussed this month's book, 'Alias Grace' by Margaret Atwood.  This almost unanimously loved this book, the almost-true story of a teenage murderer in nineteenth century Canada was gripping and made this book an easy read. 

The characters were very well written and posed some interesting questions.  We definately thought that Grace killed Nancy, we didn't believe her narrative and thought she portrayed herself as more innocent and gentile than she actually was.  Some of us thought that 'Mary' was her true personality and we didn't believe the hypnotism scene.  Atwood has delivered again an all enveloping world, totally different to her other books but excellent all the same.

Result: 8/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Girl Reading by Katie Ward
• An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• There But For The by Ali Smith
• A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French

We chose 'There But For The' by Ali Smith which we will be reading for the December meeting.

Our next meeting will be at Jen's house on Wednesday 9th November.