2023 - December - Bridge of Clay - Markus Zusak

 I doubt that any of the reading group will make it through this book. 

I am up to page 57 and cannot see any clue as to what it is about. At the moment two intertwined stories about  the 'first person' - 'I' entering the house where the 'murderer' has entered. It is the house where 5 orphaned boys live in some sort of squalor and do what they will, except on this day when Clay is at the track trying to run around it, threading his way through a number of guys who want to stop him, and one of his brothers is taking bets. - Why? Don't know. 

Do I want to read any more? no, I can't be bothered.

Group agreed the mark should be 0. 

2023- November - Border Songs by Jim Lynch

Difficult to describe this book.    A good discussion about it however.  Three plus groups, the Border Patrol, The Marijuana growers/smugglers, and the farmers and others along the border. Lots of smuggling of people and drugs across the Canadian/US border and the Border patrol, including Brandon, the autistic son of one of the farmers, and the farmers who in some cases are being paid to allow the smugglers across their land. Brandon is keen on Madeline, a neighbour, who has got involved in growing MaryJane, and he is excellent at discovering smuggling happening. Eventually John his father has a stroke, and he leaves the BP to run the farm, and Madeline gives up the drug habit and is coming to him. I love the descriptions of how Brandon recognises Birds, and of his temporal art. 

C commented that it was quirky at the beginning and gathers pace at the end. 

It kept me reading - Marks: Mostly 7 with one 6. 

2023 - October. Silent Intruder G. Hammond

Easy to read, largish print. Good story about someone using their house while they are away, and then the bad guys coming to get the intruder and involving Michael and Hilda. Tie this up with them getting married and sisterly really bad feeling and it's an light read. 6

A:    Well I enjoyed it as a relatively uncomplicated read in one sense - but there seemed to be a whole hierarchy of villains who just became more names to remember. The made up genealogy joke played on the snobbish sister just seemed puerile and I don’t think it would make her suddenly see the light - oh am I like that, so sorry ! 

Not looking for other books by the author. 

F:    I found Silent Intruder a straightforward read with a rather unsatisfying ending. The writing style seemed quite abrupt, but maybe that's what a police action book needs? I might read the same author again to see if the style altered according to the plot, but I'm not rushing to do this! 5/10?

2023 - September The Secret Barrister, by The Secret Barrister

 This month we met in Colehill Library for the first time in a few years, with most of us seeing it for the first time. They were impressed. If you are visiting the area you should drop in and say hello to the volunteers.

We felt that the book was like a textbook, and could do with more examples throughout to make it more readable.  It was very interesting and informative, but difficult to read in large doses. Some of us had had experience of the law and thought that the book was spot on. A lot of the time was spent describing our own experiences.  

Only one of us had read it completely and would give it a 9 because of the way that it related to her experiences. the other marks would be 7-8. 

2023- August - This Much is True - Margolyes

It's the autobiography of Miriam Margolyes, foul mouthed actress.  

It's all about her, but you don't learn anything about her. It's what she has done, who she has worked with, all the people she calls her closest friends. Some nice wording in the book occasionally, but she does like to try and shock.

Marks were 4.5, 5, 6 7 7.   comes out as 6. 

2023- July Sweet Caress by William Boyd

 This book comes across as an autobiography of a remarkable woman who discovers via an uncle the camera, and it is her life from then on. It includes the blackshirts marches in London, being a war correspondent, and then finally being a Vietnam war correspondent. She has lovers who help her on her way. It is a very descriptive book , and it really works. Her description of her married life as the wife of a laird is very good. I was gripped through the second half of the book. 

FW: Although I couldn't empathise with the heroine, her emotions (or, lack of??) being extremely unclear to me,  I found this book to be an interesting mixture of historical events/ likely happenings and fiction. Many sections blurred this distinction, and the photos, I felt, helped this intriguing fusion.

I did not, however, appreciate the comparative descriptions of the different men's "members"; this would normally have put me off a novel straightaway, but I persisted because it was a book club book!

I hadn't read any books before by this author and I might well be tempted to try another, as the book was, I felt, both well and differently written.
Marks out of 10? Probably 5 (esp for the for historical interest )

The marks from the rest of us were 7,8,8,8,8,9 with one comment that the reader didn't like Amory Clay, but did like the book. 

2023-June True Blue by David Baldacci

 Here are my few scrubby notes about it, until someone else wants to send me a proper review.

"Not his best. Two sisters, one a police chief, and one just out of prison, go seeking justice for the false imprisonment. A dead body causes them to work on another thing, that leads them to a couple of high ups in Government secret circles going Rogue. It includes a loaned female russian assassin. but Mace never learns who shafted her. A couple of people are helped during the book, via a wealthy do-gooder. Almost super-hero stuff."

The comment was made that it would be a good B-Movie. 

We enjoyed discussing it from Juliettes beach hut overlooking sandbanks and the English Channel from the Isle of Wight to Old Harry Rocks. 

Marks were from 4 to 7 averaging at 6.

2023-May The Sellout by Paul Beatty

 Not looking good at the start of the month.

H says: I spent an hour reading the new book for this month and decided I had better things to do than read further. So I'll come to next meeting purely to hear what everyone else thinks about it. 

P adds to that: Having ‘tried’ to read the book before, I knew it would be a tough one – so I’ve bailed on reading and am listening to it as an audio book and really, really enjoying it.  It makes sooooo much more sense listening!! 

PM:  it is wordy, but some bits do have me laughing, and some bits make you think, for instance, about a motto for your area or more importantly, local government and Racism in your community.

Of us, three didn't get very far,  it marked 9 and an audiobook story, but 8 and 7 as a book.  Two hated the language, but it did get better as the book progressed, though it was still wordy.  Was the author trying to show his intelligence and education I wonder?

The first chapter was hard work as it was stream of consciousness  and difficult to understand   with a lot of American jargon. Why was it necessary to have such an extreme beginning?

It cleared up as it went along, but questions arise as how he got all the money to do the things he did, and with the education that his father had given him, how was he so erudite and able to give latin quotations. 

I wrote down a comment that it was 'racism done in a different way'

It would probably go down well in schools because of the racism content and discussion and also because of the different writing style. 

Is that why it was on a British reading group list? 

 

2023 April - Once Upon a Time in the East - Xiaolu Guo

 It is not her first book, but it is her autobiography. She grew up in a poor area of China, but got a scholarship to a college in Beijing, and then a scholarship to study in England. It looks like she self taught herself English, and she acknowledges the great amount of help she had editing the book.

We thought it was a memorable book, describing life under the communist regime, and her impressions of the foreign country that she came to. Would we read another of hers? No. 

Interesting that amongst us some found the first part easy and the second part harder to read, and some were the other way around.

She was not a likeable character, but was this due to her unloved upbringing that she was unable to let herself have good relationships?  

She couldn't seem to see the beauty in any of the countryside that she saw, but I can't blame her for that in the part of Wales that she saw. 

There was lots of discussion around aspects of the differences in language, and how difficult English must be for people coming from a totally different way of language. 

It was commented that she has since become a visiting lecturer at a university in Berlin, and also there was an article and/or a podcast in the guardian/Radio 4. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaolu_Guo

Marks averaged at 6. 

I have got about two thirds of the way through and will finish it today as it’s due to rain heavily.

 I have read quite a few of these Chinese autobiographies including ‘white swans’ and so nothing really surprises me about the sheer wastefulness of life and resources that was the cultural revolution. She only escaped the worst exigencies of the poverty brought on by this by sheer tenacity and hard work, becoming one of 11 successful applicants out of 7 thousand  trying for  her course. And the support of her father - to try twice against such odds when they could barely afford the trip. 

What a joyless loveless childhood - and yet it happens to so many billions of people, how we take  our family life and standards of living for granted in the West!

It was interesting to note that when Chris and I made our first incursion into China in 1985 this was well  before she had gained relative freedom in Beijing. 

We hired a driver and guide in Hong Kong and drove up to, then, Canton. Our guide had not been allowed to learn or speak English until recently and had learnt secretly from the radio. He had been a doctor of Chinese medicine but earned much more as a tourist guide. 

We drove more than  a hundred miles with me desperate for the loo because the guide didn’t know how to arrange this - no public toilets and open fields which he couldn’t allow me to use! 

We shared a last meal after 3 days and the driver and guide were bowled over because we let them have the chicken feet all to themselves.

One bit of the book resonated with me, I still shudder when I remember how the guide gave me his handkerchief to mop myself after eating watermelon. It was far from clean. 

Alison

Post script. 

Just finished it and it strikes me that throughout the book she has never been happy   How sad; seeing things through her eyes, the uglier, poorer, side of Britain, the weather, struggling with the language etc. But I can’t help feeling that a bit of optimism wouldn’t have gone amiss. 

 

2023-March In the Kitchen - Monica Ali

 Ouch!  Not a good read. No one finished it, two people commented that "life is too short"

The first five or so chapters were enjoyable, about life in a hotel kitchen.

WE didn't care about any of the people, couldn't get along with Gabe

There were too many story lines, as if she had looked at all current issues in society and thrown them into a pot.  A comment was that it became about immigrants, which I can see why we thought that. 

Two of us gave it a mark of 2. 

2023- February The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

Amazon: A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal – but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong.

She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds – of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue.

Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

 From Fantastic fiction:

A bravura feat of storytelling, Mark Haddon calls upon narratives ancient and modern to tell the story of Angelica, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her father. When a young man named Darius discovers their secret, he is forced to escape on a boat bound for the Mediterranean. To his surprise he finds himself travelling backwards over two thousand years to a world of pirates and shipwrecks, of plagues and miracles and angry gods. Moving seamlessly between the past and the present, Haddon conjures the worlds of Angelica and her would-be savior in thrilling fashion. As profound as it is entertaining, The Porpoise is a stirring and endlessly inventive novel from one of our finest storytellers.

Peter: I was sickened  by the middle of chapter 2 (Page 41 of paperback). Can I, shall I continue?  I jumped to page 86 and still was upset, so will jump a little further. It brings back to mind 'The Three Faces of Eve' that I read in my childhood and all the human cruelty to our fellow man in the world today. I can't read more. 

After the meeting I did go back and read the last chapter and have to agree his descriptive writing is excellent. 

Marks varied: 8/7/4/3   I increased my mark to 3 after revisiting the grading scheme.

2023 - January - Sweet Sorrow by David Nichols

 It's a coming of age saga of a teenage boy in England I think, totally unrecognizable as anything like my growing up.  Consider it a modern Romeo and Juliet  around a performance of Romeo and Juliet.  

It has some good phrases. I liked "those who pass off Pesto as a vegetable".

As I read it I do recognise some experiences from my growing up, like the watching the world spin around you when you are so drunk.  What was the other that I was going to mention?  Oh yes, he describes falling off his bike as when time went very slowly - Not my experience at all. 

Amy's idea to make it into a coffee shop was brilliant, just 20 years too early. I don't know why it failed. 

I struggled a bit because he  started to tell his new love Niamh about those times, and then it wasn't dialogue but telling the story as if he was running it through his head again. I like the way he went to the reunion and came away happy having seen Fran happy. 

P: I have read another of this author’s books, One Day and absolutely loved it (would probably give it a 8-9) so I had high hopes for this which regrettably weren’t met  It was good, I thought the character development was very good and I enjoyed getting into the mind of an adolescent boy!  I enjoyed the writing style and I quite enjoyed the story, though it felt a bit chick-flick B movie.  But like I said, I was comparing it to something else and if I wasn’t, I might have scored it higher. Mark 7.

other marks 7, 7, 8.5

2022 - December - Absolute Proof by Peter James

 My comments: Bit of an Indiana Jones/ Dan Brown story. Investigator retired doctor gets journalist hero involved in researching absolute proof that God exists. He has to go to three places to gather the evidence, but somehow two sets of bad guys who don't want this sort of stuff revealed or want to use it for their own purposes are after him with deadly intent. I jumped the middle part of the book, and he gets to the last stage where a magician saves his life and gets killed himself, and then a huge manifestation from God appears, but Ross's piece in The Times is downgraded. end of story.

P:  It was a very easy read and the story was quite interesting, but I. really didn’t enjoy the laborious writing style.  Felt like far too much unimportant description that added nothing to the story.  It was a relief to get to the end of a very long book and it felt like nothing would have been lost of it was shorter.  I quite liked the ending as it wasn’t conclusive and left you thinking, but not sure it was worth it for me. Mark: 5

so Marks - 5/5/5