2021 November PAcking My Library - Manguel

Due to everybody, well a lot of us, going on holiday, there will not be a meeting to discuss this book this month. Hopefully we will have a Christmas meeting  in December. 

My thoughts. I am not getting on with it very well. I realize that it is supposed to be in praise of libraries, but I have already decided that it is not a book that I would keep in my library. At the moment I am reading one section every evening. I don't think it would be possible to read it in a large session. You need to absorb what he has said in each section. I doesn't strike me as a book that is written with a purpose, just putting down his ideas and thoughts as he packs up his library and home. 

2021-September & October - Maxwell Sim and Leon

COE	TERRIBLE PRIVACY OF MAXWELL SIM
DE WAAL	MY NAME IS LEON

 Well, I have not received any comments about either of these books, so there is nothing to write here.

 

August 2021 - Dear Mrs Bird

 I did enjoy Mrs Bird ; a lovely light read which made me chuckle and moved me to tears.

Horribly realistic descriptions of the air raids. And I did enjoy a happy ending. Not high literature but it 

gets a 9 from me!

Maggie

My review of dear Mrs Bird. Thought the beginning of the book was entertaining and light weight but the 

descriptions of the blitz was well written and real,and the sadness of those affected buy the bombing. I 

think I'll give it a 5, because I liked the Mrs bird part, hated the love part. See you all soon. Daphne

Peter Notes: A chick-lit type story about two girls living in London in 1942. Emmie gets a job on a 

newspaper, but it turns out to be a woman’s magazine and she has to select agony aunt letters for Mrs 

Bird, a real old battleaxe to respond to, but she starts responding to some that Mrs. Bird deems 

'unsuitable' 

She also works at a fire station where Bunty falls in love with a fireman. At first I nearly gave up as chick-

lit but I got caught up in the story. Em gets caught out and nearly loses her job, but ends up with a better 

one, and Bunty gets back in touch after a breakup and saves her bacon. [5]

Ali: Enjoyed book, had read it before. 8. Didn’t think the problem pages added much. Chris didn’t read.

OL not impressed. Very light read. Sounded better than it was

Have a good meeting either outside or via zoom - say hello to everyone and see you all at the end of   September.     Linda

9/5/5//8  = 7.

2021 - May - The Word is Murder by and with Anthony Horowitz

The thing that pleased me when I finished is noting on the inside back cover that this was the first in a series of books about this detective. The story is first person around an author who is to follow a difficult detective and write about his work on a murder case. It is very different from other crime stories. Towards the end I found myself thinking that all the clues had been there but I had missed them, just like the author in following Hawthorn around. It would have helped if I knew Hamlet better, but I am more familiar with the scottish play. I enjoyed it. My mark 9?

On Fantastic Fiction it shows that he is a prolific author of all sorts of books.

These are the Hawthorn books.

   1. The Word is Murder (2017)
   2. The Sentence is Death (2018)
   3. A Line to Kill (2021)

Started the second book. Hawthorn shows up on a movie set and drags the author away. Very much a continuation with comments about the first book  not yet on sale and Hawthorn still doesn't like the title. 

  

2021 - April The Stranger Diaries by Ellie Griffiths

 DW: The stranger dairies what a rubbish book. Plot thin. Writer attempted to write each chapter as a different character in the book, you ended up not bonding with any of them. Harbinger Kaur began as an interesting person, but soon faded into the norm". The murderer was surprising but then it tied in nicely with the plot. Mark 2. I read an Elly Griffith's book smoke and mirrors which I enjoyed and gave it 7, but not this one.

LS: After doing some very deep and heavy book reading, I was quite happy to read this book. The book plodded along - no great effort to read.. I would give the book 5 - readable but not memorable. 

PM: excellent crime suspense story based around a short story by an author who lived in the building where most of the cast taught as it is now a school. People are getting killed in the same manner as in the story, and then Claire finds writing in her dairy to add to the eeriness. And daughter Georgia is being taught creative writing by a white witch. The dog features highly too. I will look out other books by this author. Mark 8.

MS: Liked the original gothic tale around which the story was woven, and also liked the different narrators for each chapter.  She researched the education system quite well

OL: Has read lots of her books before, especially the Ruth Gallagher novels. That's why she suggested this book.  It was very clever how it was presented, but the denoument was a bit flat. 

Marks ranged from 2 to 9, average 7. 

2021 - March - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng.

Shortly after I started this book I thought  that Izzy had done the best thing possible to that all-american perfect family home.  It is an interesting contrast between the two concepts of free to travel and absorb life anywhere and  living in the same regimented manner from birth to death in the community of your ancestors and hoping that your children, who are moulded in your shape, would follow the same path. 

The movie makes Mia out to be black but I see her and Pearl as Japanese-American types. 

I didn't really like the book, but I was forced to finish it to find out what happened. Did Mia and Pearl ever talk about the abortion? Did Lexie ever tell her mother - I doubt it. And the book is so full of misunderstandings of people. How did Bebe get a ticket to Canton - Not cheap. 

As I finished this book I was reminded of a song from long ago 'Little Boxes'    https://open.spotify.com/track/4VJrTc5QPr13zgkwxaTjjN?si=b382cc24c03b42da

Marks 5x6, 7 & 5 = 6.

Basic comments are quite enjoyed it, but unmemorable and unrealistic. Thought Mia was selfish in pursuit of 'art'. 

Pearl envied the Richardson's stable lifestyle

No sympathies for the adoptive mum of Bebe's baby. 

The mothering idea went through the whole book.  In some ways it was a comparison of motherhood.

Mia always called her  Mrs. Richardson, but as a landlord and employer one would, except maybe in Ohio. 

There was noticeably a lack of offialdom in looking after Pearl. 

And for Bebe, if you drop through the cracks there is no safety net

2021 - February - Narrow Road to the Deep North - Flanagan

Appreciated that it was a good Book, but Japanese stuff still brings back horrible thoughts. This is the starting comment from one of our 80+ readers, who remembers the Japanese behaviour in the war. 

C said " If I knew someone who had been there I wouldn't have been able to read it." I couldn't, and others couldn't take the horrors described in it. 

It was difficult knowing people who had suffered it. L said it was unpalatable, though there were lovely bits in it.

The characters were good and the places descriptions were good. It was a book of three parts. The secret him before the war and his love affairs, the middle bit which was his war, and the aftermath where he was trying to make sense of what happened. He couldn't help being a hero, but he got this pinned on him because he persisted in asking for help.  It explores how the japanese could be so inhumane.

C - A great book, so difficult, so good.

One of the few booker prizes that deserved it.

A good book, but not a nice book.

It was more real than the previous book 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo' .

However it did get good marks from those that could read it.

Maggie: do apologise: I totally forgot that we were meeting this evening. And very disappointed to have missed the opportunity to hear what everyone thought about The narrow road to the deep north.

For me it was an interesting and compelling read in spite of some of the truly horrific 

descriptions of thePOW camps. I felt that the characters were well drawn and believable. 

And it was interesting to get the insights into the perceptions of all the different characters 

especially the Japanese culture underpinning their behaviour.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband was in several of these camps on the railway. And 

his telling of his experiences accorded entirely with the book.

I felt sorry for Dorrigo who had such an unfulfilled personal life. But it added an interesting dimension

to the book.

.

Daphne emailed me and probably all of us. She also found it a good read and would give it a 9. As 

would I. 

 

10, 9, 9,9 8, 

2021- January The Beekeeper of Alleppo - Christy Lefteri

From the first page you know that this is going to be a dispiriting book. It is about a man and his family who have to flee Syria and make their way to England. On the way he takes on a lone boy to replace his dead son. His wife is blind and very depressed.  I kept leaving the book and coming back to it as it was our reading group book. Chris gave up and went for something lighter.  He said that as you know early on that they have made it to the UK, what's the point of reading further. 

This was a criticism of the book by most readers, that it jumped around in place and time. O said that 'the structure was irritating'.

It was a traumatic story, certainly not escapism that most of us want inthese days of Covid. 

L found the bees interesting. They were, but not as someone said  'an allegory for life'. Another comment was that the book was about blindness, Afra's psychological blindness caused by the death of her son, and Nuri's emotional blindness due to the traumatic shocks that he has seen. Also throughout the book he was seeing things that didn't exist, like the little boy Mohammed. 

M did like the characters.  were they beleivable? Hard to say with Nuri seeing these young boys accompanying them that were fictitious

We couldn't understand how he kept that large amount of money safe during all his travels and the rough areas he was in. Also how did he get so much money, and what currency was it? 

At the end it all came rather fast as they got via the smuggler Italian passorts that meant that they were able to travel throughout the EU untroubled, and flew quickly from Greece to England. 

M says that she has recommended it to her otehr book group, but doesn't know that was such a good idea. It was a book selected for us by the librarian, not one we chose.

However the marks averaged at 7.