Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

This month we met at Louise's house and she fed us cheese ... yummy cheese.  Thanks Louise!  We were also joined by our newest member, Susie - welcome Susie.

We discussed 'Rosemary's Baby' by Ira Levin, a short, readable story set in the 1960's about a young couple moving to a new flat who are dragged into the New York underground-scene of devil-worshipping.  We thought that the story, although thought-provoking, could have been better developed along with the characters who seemed rather one dimensional.  For instance, why Terry kill herself?  When did Guy agree to the plan and to what extent did he know what was going to happen?  We liked the idea of horror being more subtle and closer to home which made it even more scary in a psychological way.  We mostly disliked Rosemary and thought she was rather weak and wimpy, although this could be just how women were perceieved in the early 60s.  We found it quite shocking how easy it was to make everyone think Rosemary was being paranoid, even her previous doctor.  We liked the ending and discussed whether we thought Rosemary would accept her new role or whether she would harm her child.

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 6/10
Ending: 7/10
Cover: 6/10
Slap: Rosemary and/or Guy.

Overall Total: 6.5/10

We chose our next book, with an Easter theme, from the following:

• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
• Chocolate Cake with Hitler by Emma Craigie
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Pure by Andrew Miller
• The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalyse by Robert Rankin
• I, Claudius by Robert Graves
• The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell
• Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson
• Never Trust a Rabbit by Jeremy Dyson

We chose 'Never Trust a Rabbit' by Jeremy Dyson which we will be reading for the April meeting.

Our next meeting will be at 8pm on Wednesday 14th March at my house for a double birthday celebrating for Rachel and the book group.  No theme this time, just bring a book review of your choice.

We will also be choosing our book of the year for 2011-12.  Looking back, I can see we voted on a book for 2010 in December 2010 so were working to calendar years instead of book group years, so I'll adjust this to be book group years to coincide with our book group birthday.

January Meeting

Happy New Year!

We are entering the third year of our book group (three in April to be exact), how time flies!

This month we finally gave up on the Warwick Arms, it has turned into an eat-y pub so we skipped over the road to Copa Bar again which was nice and quiet.  We discussed 'Bed' by David Whitehouse.

An easy read with short chapters which were perfect for reading in short bursts.  We mostly liked this book - kind of - instead of this being a story of a man in bed it was more about the relationships around him and how his actions affected everyone.  I liked the way the brother was never named, which both threw the focus back on Malcolm yet not on him (I don't think that makes sense but I don't know how else to say it), everyone was defined by their relationship to Malcolm which begs the question, what would happen when he died?  We felt the characers could have been developed more, for instance, what role did the Dad have apart from building the massive winch?  No-one in the book was normal, yet I suppose a book about normal people would be quite dull.  Our biggest gripe was the ending, it was very sudden and didn't really conclude anything.  We had a really good discussion on this one, so much so, we came up with a new scoring system:

Concept: 8/10
Plot: 6/10
Characters: 4/10
Ending: 4/10
Cover: 9/10 (due to textured buttons and collar on PJs - thanks Rachel)
Who we would most like to slap: Mother

Overall Total: 6/10

We chose our next book from the following:

• Solar by Ian McEwan
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
• The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh
• The Life by Malcolm Knox

We chose 'Rivers of London' by Ben Aaronovitch which we will be reading for the March meeting.

Our next meeting will be at someone's house (volunteers please) on Wednesday 8th Feb and our next theme will be Easter (as we'll be choosing the book to be read over Easter), please be as inventive with this theme as possible.

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.