Evening Book Club 2010/2011

Date  ~ Wednesday 2 November    
Time  ~ 7.30 pm
Hostess ~ Margaret Queen Millsy
Venue ~ Copford Colchester  
Book  ~ A Round-Heeled Woman -
                  My Late -Life Adventures in Sex and Romance  
By      ~ Jane Juska
 
We met at Margaret's for the October meeting to discuss Family Album by Penelope Lively, it was great to have Margaret's input again after her temporary grounding by the DVLA 
We found ourselves sharply divided between those (2) who had enjoyed this book, and those (2) who had actively disliked it.  Johanna reserved judgment as she had not completed her reading of it.  Anita thought the book had been written as though by a talentless stage director - lacking in atmosphere.  She had also found the subject matter - a dysfunctional family - depressing.  Jean's comment was even more forthright:
"Another dreary story by another woman novelist."  The descriptions of the setting were unnecessarily wordy and the characters selfish and unsympathetic.
 
Margaret and Kate had, by contrast, detected ironic humour in the book and recognised the authenticity of some descriptions.  Once again, we agreed to differ but concluded that we would try to vary our diet and seek out some male writers, one of whom may be Deric Langdon, whom Margaret had recently discovered, and whose writing Anita admires and finds very funny - while dealing with serious subjects.
 
Margaret shared several of her sharply witty and sometimes risque poems with us, Anita offered an amusing Mike Harding, and Kate provided Keats' "Ode to Autumn" which, while not in the humourous vein, reminded us of the good weather we have recently enjoyed.  We also changed the world in our customary manner - some of our subjects are not repeatable on an open forum!
We had a very pleasant evening and were reluctant to depart.  Our next read will be Jane Juska: A Round-Heeled Woman - My Late -Life Adventures in Sex and Romance.  How's that for a contrast?  We plan to meet again at Margaret's on Wednesday 2 November.  All welcome.
 
 


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Date  ~ Tuesday 4 October   
Time  ~ 7.30 pm
Hostess ~ Margaret Queen Millsy
Venue ~ Copford Colchester  
Book~    Family Album
              by Penelope Lively

Also bring a personal selection of amusing Poetry  

                                All are welcome

The book club met on the 30 August at the home of Johanna Contesse cuisse de Grenouille
and discussed A Certain Justice by P D James
This book is one in the series of detective novels featuring the character Adam Dalgleish 
We all agreed it was enjoyably complex and well written
Some years ago Jean Lady Carmemita had heard P D James speak impressively at a Book Festival
We found many of the characters, probably deliberately, unsympathetic: so it was difficult to feel too bound up in their fates! 
All agreed, however, that the climax of the story was gripping and exciting
Jean Lady Carmenita likes to be challenged by her reading and reads with a dictionary to hand  

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Date  ~ Tuesday 30 August   
Time  ~ 7.30 pm
Hostess ~ Johanna
               Contesse Cuisse de Grenouille  
Venue ~ Boreham 
Book~  A Certain  Justice ~ P D James 

                                All are welcome

The book club met in July at Kate's home to discuss Room by Emma Donoghue
This tells the story of a victim of kidnapping and sexual abuse from the perspective of her five year old son
Needless to say, we had considerable discussion as to whether the five year old's voice was captured with verisimilitude
 Jean in particular had had her fill of first person narrative and was longing for something stylistically more sophisticated
Most of us had found the book thought-provoking, and Johanna had been interested to reseach other examples of people held in captivity for long periods 
  
 

 

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Date  ~ Tuesday 26 July  
Time  ~ 7.30 pm
Hostess ~ Jean Lady Carmenita 
Venue ~ Wickham Bishops
Book~