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.