December 2012: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Clank.  Clank.  Clank.

Be not afraid, mortal.  You shall soon be visited by three spirits.  One will tell you your past...one your future...and one...something else.  I can't remember.  I think it'll calculate your BMI or something.  Ooh, these chains aren't half heavy.  Anyway, tara me duck.

Clank.  Clank.  Clank.

Woooo!  Behold, for I am the Ghost of Christmas Past!  Come with me, as we journey back to a cold, wintry night of the 18th of December, in the Year of Our Lord, Twenty Hundred and Twelve.  Heading down Broad Street in the City of Nottingham, we peer in the window of a small café restaurant called Edin's, a rather dark yet welcoming place where it's surprisingly difficult to order a hot chocolate.  Spy in the back room, a table full of people...  They seem to be talking whilst eating - a most disgraceful habit - and have copies of a book lying beside them.  But what the Dickens is it?  Ah yes...something old and somewhat festive, methinks.  Something so instantly familiar, yet so enjoyable to read and reread.  Something with a vividness to its prose which makes its familiar story seem fresh and exciting.  Something which whilst reading one finds oneself being unable to shake off the image of Kermit the Frog playing Bob Cratchitt.  A resounding success, it seems.  What fun!  What joy!  Plus the return of some old faces from a few months back, a year ago, and several years ago!  How appropriate!

Ah, but the image is fading...tis fading...tis fading...tis gone.  Farewell....  Woooo...

....sssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssss....

...uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhHHHHHHHHhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuu....

...iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ooh 'ello.  Sorry about that, I was trying to be mysterious and spooky and silent, but that's not gonna work in a text medium.  Never mind.  I'm the Ghost of Christmases Yet To Come.  Not that I'm here to talk about Christmas, oh no sirree; that's far too far in the future.  Instead I'm gonna tell you what's gonna be going on in the next couple of months, and we'll take it from there.

So, basically, in January you all will be meeting on the 22nd to discuss another classic piece of Victoriana...'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!  He believed in fairies, y'know.  Idiot.  Anyway, it's a classic compendium of crime short stories which will hopefully be full of fun and japes.  Then, on the 19th of February, discussion shall centre on (don't be scared now) science fiction classic 'The Sirens of Titan' by Kurt Vonnegut.  Deep breaths.  It'll be fine, I promise.  And there'll be lots of celebrating, people being opinionated, and it's likely someone will smash a glass.

What?  You're thinking of not bothering to go...?!  The vision is changing...I see now a house full of despairing souls...a fire, turned to ash...a pair of tiny crutches in the corner, long unused...  It's not too late to change your mind, y'know!  What?  Oh, no, I don't understand the term 'emotional blackmail'.

We're all fading now.  If ghosts can fade.  I mean, we're already pretty faded, despite the Christmas pud. Anyhoo, we'll say a fond farewell and wish you all a Happy New Year!

With love,

The Spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Future, and How Much Weight You've Put On Over Christmas.


Tuesday January 22nd - 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' by Arthur Conan Doyle

Tuesday February 19th - 'The Sirens of Titan' by Kurt Vonnegut

7pm Edin's (in the back room.  Best bring a flashlight.)

October 2012 - Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Yesterday we had a good ol' chinwag about one of the few books written by Hilary Mantel which hasn't won the Booker prize: 'Beyond Black'.  In one of those rare occasions where we all generally agreed, we found the idea of the book interesting and the character of Alison the medium original, but felt it went on far too long, repeating itself instead of developing.  A shame, really.  My biggest bugbear was when she referenced the characters driving to Beeston and talks about the M1 and A52 joining at Junction 23 when surely she meant Junction 25.  That's presumably the sole reason it didn't end up on the Booker longlist.

Next month we'll be meeting to talk about 'The Conductor' by Sarah Quigley, set during the Siege of Leningrad and about a conductor's attempts to record the premiere of a Shostakovich symphony to be used to raise morals during the Nazi invasion.  I'm quite excited about it!  Fingers crossed it delivers.

Also, for December's meeting, we've decided to embrace the season and do 'A Christmas Carol'.  At least it's short.  (And you could get away with just watching the Muppet's version if need be.)

We'll be in Edin's as usual at 7pm!

November 20th - The Conductor by Sarah Quigley

December 18th - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

June 2012 - Snowdrops by AD Miller

Why, hallo there!

Big thanks to those who ignored last Tuesday's football and came to talk about dirty goings-on in Moscow.  Despite some confusion over Snowdrops turning out not to be written by everyone's favourite English novelist Andrew Miller but instead some other bloke with a suspiciously similar name, we still enjoyed the level of detail and description the imposter was able to instill about Moscow into his debut novel, even if overall the story wasn't quite as exciting or in-depth as we would have liked.

Coming up next month we have another thriller which is more firmly placed in the crime genre: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø, and a favourite of various members of the group.

We're also coming up to the end of our selections, so if you have any ideas for titles we could do in the later half of the year, please get in touch!  This is a great opportunity for anyone who's not been enamoured with our choices in recent months to get a chance to steer the ship.  Perhaps there's a book you've always wanted to read but need the impetus to do so, or dare to suggest an old favourite you think others might like?  Either let me know, or suggest it yourself at the next meeting!

See you then.

May 2012 - The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

Hope you've been enjoying the fine weather! Personally I hate the sunshine as it means I have to close all the curtains so I can still see my computer screen.

Last month's reading group meeting saw us snubbing the sun in favour of the back room in Edin's where we discussed The Tiger's Wife.  I think generally we were in agreement that although many bits of it were wonderful, overall it seemed needlessly confusing and hard going. Personally I hated that the author was a year younger than me. (Boo, down with successful people younger than me. Boo!) I notice this year's Orange Prize winner (and, I guess, final one as Orange are dropping their sponsorship) was announced yesterday, Madeline Miller with her debut novel The Song of Achilles.  There's one for us to potentially do once the paperback comes out.

In June we're denying the summer months even more by doing Snowdrops by Andrew Miller.  See you there!

April - Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman

So it has a long, unwieldy name which - upon hearing it - some people decided sounded pretentious, and others found it hard to track down a copy of the book because it wasn't released by a mainstream publisher, but...BUT...eventually we got to the point where people read Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical and realised it's a truly wonderful, funny, lovely collection of strange, dark and very witty stories.  And everybody seemed to love it.  I'm thrilled.

Next month we return to what I still cruelly refer to as a "3 for 2" novel with The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht.  It won the Orange Prize last year so must surely be worth a skim.  Surely?!

Tuesday May 22nd - The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. Back room of Edin's Bistro, 7pm.

March - The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

I'm trying to figure out a way to link the recent sunny weather we've been having to the title of The Summer Without Men, but I'm not having much luck.  But it has been very nice weather, hasn't it?  Oh, yes, lovely.  It's almost like summer, you might say, perhaps a summer without...  No, that's not going to work.

Anyway, we met to discuss the Siri Hustvedt novel, and I think generally we were all very positive about it.  I have to admit I had my qualms before I began reading it; I thought from the title and its rather flowery cover that it was going to be a drab piece of chick lit.  Meaning I wasn't really prepared for its arty, considered prose, its well drawn characters, and its occasional ramblings into obscure literary referencing.  (Whether that last point was part of the character, or a superfluous attempt to show-off by the author caused us much discussion; personally it was only the meta-reference to her husband Paul Auster which made me yell, "OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE" out loudly in the staff room.)

But overall we enjoyed it, and possibly even thought it should have been longer and have given all its characters and disparate storylines a bit more meat.  Sue recommended another book by Hustvedt called What I Loved which I'll check out at some point.  Oh, and big thanks to Bev for suggesting we do the book in the first place; good pick.

Speaking of picks, we made an effort to arrange dates and some titles for future groups.  Here's what we decided on for the next few months:

May 22nd - The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht (winner of the Orange Prize last year)
June 19th  - Snowdrops by Andrew Miller (nominated for the Booker Prize last year)
July 24th  - The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø (first [ish] in the popular crime series)
August 28th - Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell (I have no interesting facts about this one, sorry)

But before all that we'll be meeting on the 17th of April to talk about Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman.  A couple of people have already said they've really enjoyed reading this one, so I'm breathing a bit easier about it now I know it won't be a re-enactment of the time I got everyone to read The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I still have nightmares about the sea of silent, resentful faces.  Brrr. 

See you in April!

February - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Phew - time for an update to the blog, methinks.  Quick, before all those Internet users out there believe we haven't been diligently meeting up every month and putting the world to rights by squabbling over books!  I mean, by our considered and intelligent literary discussions.  Oh yes.

February's meeting saw us discussing John le Carre's famous spy thriller, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which got the thumbs up from everyone apart from me because I was too stupid to understand what was going on in it.  Even though I'd already seen the film.  (To be fair, I didn't understand what was going on in that, either.)  The rest of the time was spent glaring at a rival book group also camped out in the back room of Edin's and made up of far younger and more attractive members than us.  No jumping ship, anyone!  They were doing the Julian Barnes this time, so we're one month ahead of them at least.  They all seemed very serious; we have a lot more fun at our meetings.  Honest.

Next month on the 20th March we're doing The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt.  Men will be present.  But it's not summer yet, so that's presumably allowed. 

17th April we're doing - DEFINITELY DOING THIS TIME, DAMMIT - independently published short story collection Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical by Robert Shearman.  They're witty, silly and strange little stories about failing relationships, and one of the most beautiful books I've read in recent years.  Well worth getting hold of this unique collection, even if you don't manage to get to the group.  (There's various copies going fairly cheaply new and second hand on Amazon right here.  Go on, live a little.)

Please post comments and suggestions for further books below.  Post!  Post until your fingers bleed!