2025-March The Magician by Colm Toibin

 This is  a fictionalised biography of Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize winning author. 

This is an article about him:

https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/11/thomas-mann-and-the-european-disease-of-nihilism

I found the book hard to get into  as I was thinking of it as a novel and not a biography. In the early pages I think he concentrates too much on Thomas's thoughts of homosexuality.  It is easy to read though. 

As the book goes on I find it hard to relate the things that occur to place and time, especially as the family moves from one place to another.  The declaration of war sets the time once. 

The part about them settling in Princeton reminds me of the book about John Von Neumann which I enjoyed.'Turings Cathedral' which was as much about John Von Neumann as Turing, it describes how Von Neumann took Turings famous paper and used it to build the first computer from which all future computers were derived. Includes all the famous people from the era of the Manhattan Project, and a couple of others like Ulam and Bigelow who were great at helping get it going. Some good quotes and comparisons in here.

1948 in Los Angeles. This is the very essence of a dis-functional family. The ending was a bit weak. He died in Switzerland. 

The aspects of German culture were interesting.

Does the book make you want to learn more about Mann, or should it tie ti all up. This is a general question about biographies.

The Hare with the Amber Eyes was another story about a family in Germany during this period, but a far better story.

2025- February - Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

 Book 3 in the Shetland series.

We liked learning about Shetland Life and some of the history. From one of us who had visited, it was thought to be true to life, very family oriented, and somewhat narrow minded. 

It was easy to read and not a literary book.

A nice enough story with a mildly disappointing end. 

Marks in the 6's and 7's, about 6 1/2

A bit of a discussion about how we read books, T read hers immediately she got it and had forgotten a lot after a month, I read in short bursts and it takes me a month to get through it, Others are reading it in the last few days to find out how it ends before the meeting. 

2025 -January - Night Watch by Sarah Waters & Violetta by Isabel Allende

 No meeting in December so two books to discuss in January. 

Night Watch

Some of us tried it, two of us read it. three of us got to about 100 pages and couldn't see where it was going. It was in three parts going backwards in time and it was thought it would have been better being done in chronological order. Pointed out that as the publisher was Virago it was a feminist book. Lesbianism and Heterosexual relationships in it. No one could make out the young lad who was the centre of the book. Relationships weren't developed satisfactorily.  Marks of 4,3,1.5

Violetta

Again, some people thought that the relationships weren't developed enough. Plenty of excitement in the life of Violetta from 1920 to 2020 - Time of the Flu epidemic to Covid. I wish that I had looked at the Wikipedia page for  Salvador Allende  while reading the book, I would have had a much better idea of the story. 

Marks 4,5,6,7,8,8,8,8 =avg 7