December 2018 - It’s Christmas!

December is Christmas Meal time and to mark the season, we will be reading “Skipping Christmas” by John Grisham.

November 2018 - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

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The book chosen for the November 2018 group is Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman.

We will be meeting on Thursday 8th November.

If you are interested in joining the group drop us an email; we would love to see you

About the book: Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely any change is better than… fine?

April 2018 - Moths by Karl Manders

Hello!

Despite the silence, the Welwyn Garden City book group is still going strong and always on the look out for new members!

This month we're reading Ian's choice of Moths by Karl Manders, and will be meeting on Thursday 12th April to discuss it.  Here's a synopsis for you:

From rural Holland in World War II to the Soviet labour camps by way of a curious jazz band in Minsk and Moscow, Moths tells the parallel stories of a father and son who live through interesting times. 

A self-indulgent Dutch businessman finds himself caught up in the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russian army, and playing piano for an unusual band at a time when jazz is a risky business in Stalinist Russia... Meanwhile, the boy, who has barely known his father, is brought up by his doting, childless aunt in the flat farmlands of east Holland. One day he comes upon an old moated castle full of moths, and meets the curious young girl who breeds and keeps the creatures captive there.

As the fifties come to an end, their parallel tracks converge in a powerful dénoument. Vivid, magical, heartbreaking and with astonishing range and layers of meaning, Moths is a gripping and beautiful literary debut.

We've read some great books over the last few months - here are a few of them:

The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain - chosen by Jenna
The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by PD James - a festive choice for our annual Christmas dinner!
Submission by Michel Houellebecq - chosen by Ian
The Power by Naomi Alderman - chosen by Louise
Horns by Joe Hill - chosen by Caroline
Red Shift by Alan Garner - chosen by Ellie
Trumpet by Jackie Kay - chosen by Alistair
The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent - chosen by Beth
The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy - chosen by Clare
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd - chosen by Kloe
A Private Moon by Peter Benson - chosen by Martyn

If you're aged 20-45 and interested in joining us (on the second Thursday evening of every month), drop us an email at wgcbookgroup@gmail.com.

March - An Untamed State

Our book for March is An Untamed State by Roxanne Gay...

February's book - The Big Sleep

We'll be meeting on the second Thursday of February to discuss The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

Last month's book received mixed responses. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt didn't quite draw us in.

October 2015 - A Man Called Ove

Hi all,

In October we will be chatting about A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.

Enjoy!

Remiss again!

We've read some great books in the last few months.

July 15 - Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
June 15 - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
May 15 - The Death of Grass by John Christopher
April 15 - Reminder by Tom McCarthy
March 15 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Feb 15 - Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare

Next up for August is The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

If any of these sound like your sort of thing, why not come along and join us? More details on the About Us page!

2014 into 2015

I've been even more lax than usual at updating what we've been reading in the last year, but the book group has continued to meet each month and we've got through some interesting reads.

The book we will be reading in February 2015 is Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare. Nick wrote the introduction to the book we read in Jan, and we thought we'd give his works a try.

Here's what we've read in the last few months:

Jan - Cakes and Ale by W Somerset Maugham
Dec - Tenth of December by George Saunders
Nov - Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Oct - The 100 Year Old Man Who Jumped Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
Sept - He Wants by Alison Moore by Herman Koch
Aug - Summer House with Swimming Pool
July - The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
June - The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

April and May

The book for May is Heft by Liz Moore. Trying to break a pattern of recent sad and dispiriting books, we're hopeful that this one has a positive vibe.

"Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn't left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising sporting career - if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel's mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur's. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene's unexpected phone call to Arthur - a plea for help - that jostles them into action."



In April we discussed Falling Man by Don Delillo.

"Falling Man begins on September 11, in the smoke and ash of the burning towers. In the days and the years following, we trace the aftermath of this global tremor in the private lives of a few reticulated individuals. Theirs are lives choreographed by loss, by grief and by the enormous force of history."

February and March

I'm a little behind with updating for the latest book.

In February we read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. As he comes to the end of his life, Reverend John Ames begins a rambling letter to his young son, describing his both his life and his hopes for his family after he has gone.


In March, we are going to discuss Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman.

The rather enigmatic blurb states:

"This is a novel for people with breeding.


Only people with the right genes and the wrong impulses will find its marriage of bold ideas and deplorable characters irresistible. It is a novel that engages the mind while satisfying those that crave the thrill of a chase.


There are riots and sex. There is love and murder. There is Darwinism and Fascism, nightclubs, invented languages and the dangerous bravado of youth. And there are lots of beetles.


It is clever. It is distinctive. It is entertaining.We hope you are too."

Book for Jan - Apple Tree Yard

For our meeting on 9 January 2014, we'll be reading Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty.

"Yvonne Carmichael has worked hard to achieve the life she always wanted: a high-flying career in genetics, a beautiful home, a good relationship with her husband and their two grown-up children.

Then one day she meets a stranger at the Houses of Parliament and, on impulse, begins a passionate affair with him - a decision that will put everything she values at risk.

At first she believes she can keep the relationship separate from the rest of her life, but she can't control what happens next. All of her careful plans spiral into greater deceit and, eventually, a life-changing act of violence.

Apple Tree Yard is a psychological thriller about one woman's adultery and an insightful examination of the values we live by and the choices we make, from an acclaimed writer at the height of her powers."

Have a very Happy Christmas and see you in the New Year!

The Uninvited by Liz Jensen - December

The next book is The Uninvited by Liz Jensen.

"A seven-year-old girl puts a nail-gun to her grandmother's neck and fires. An isolated incident, say the experts. The experts are wrong. Across the world, children are killing their families. Is violence contagious?"

Mine has just arrived in the post and I'm looking forward to starting it.

As well as the usual book discussion, our Christmas meal with a book gift-Secret Santa is on Thurs 12 December.

See you in December.

November - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Our book for November is If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor.

On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence - street cricket, barbecues, painting windows...But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening.

In October we read If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino. This generated some good discussion, and the book was later proved not to be as far from real life as might otherwise have been thought:

September - Shades of Grey (no, not that one)

In August we discussed Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee. Not technically fiction, but we let Maddy off (this time...). It had a mixed response, with general agreement that it was an interesting picture of early 20th Century life, but without enough substance to really hook us in.

Ian is hosting the next discussion in September and has chosen Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. Not to be confused with a certain popular book by E L James.

July - The Cellist of Sarajevo

We're meeting on the 4th July to discuss The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

"Sarajevo, in the 1990s, is a hellish place. The ongoing war devours human life, tears families apart and transforms even banal routines, such as acquiring water, into life-threatening expeditions. Day after day, a cellist stations himself in the midst of the devastation, defying the ever-present snipers to play tributes to victims of a massacre."

June - Capital by John Lanchester

Our book for June, chosen by Martyn, is Capital by John Lanchester.

"Pepys Road: an ordinary street in the Capital. Each house has seen its fair share of first steps and last breaths, and plenty of laughter in between. Today, through each letterbox along this ordinary street drops a card with a simple message: We Want What You Have.

Capital is a post-crash state-of-the nation novel told with compassion and humour, featuring a cast of characters that you will be sad to leave behind."

See you in June!

May - The Third Policeman

Anna has chosen The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien for our May meeting.

"A masterpiece of black humour from the renown comic and acclaimed author of 'At Swim-Two-Birds' - Flann O'Brien. A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt, 'The Third Policeman' is comparable only to 'Alice in Wonderland' as an allegory of the absurd. Distinguished by endless comic invention and its delicate balancing of logic and fantasy, 'The Third Policeman' is unique in the English language."

April's Book - HHhH

For April we are reading HHhH by Laurent Binet.

HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich" or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich".

Based on a true story concerning Reinhard Heydrich - The Butcher of Prague.

Musings on Dangerous Liaisons by Maddy

Les Liaisons Dangereuse (Dangerous Liaisons)

Scandal, deception, lust… What more could you want from a book?

The clever use of letters as narrative lets you in on several characters’ secrets, most of which are shocking even by today's standards. Each character has a definitive voice and every one is believable and entertaining, if not always likeable (although each of us warmed to different characters).

I must confess that I couldn't help comparing it to the film Cruel Intentions (a modern retelling of Dangerous Liaisons) quite a lot, which actually helped me as I still had 30 pages to read by the time everyone arrived - baking the cake seemed more important, somehow. It was a shame, as they were pretty eventful pages, it turned out...

In our book group chat, we mainly talked about the way the book handles gender equality (why is it more socially acceptable for a man to use and discard women than it is for a woman to have a string of lovers?), religion (it is often the vessel through which characters are undone), sex (there's a lot alluded to in the book, not all of it consensual), and friendship (can it always be trusted?).

I think we all enjoyed it - even Ian, by the end of the evening - and would recommend it. I definitely would, especially if you like a bit of old school gossip and intrigue.

March - The Fault In Our Stars

In March we are discussing The Fault In Our Stars by John Green.

"Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten."

Some thoughts on our last book, Dangerous Liaisons, to follow!