2020 - September - Where the Crawdads Sing

In August we read 'The Tattoist of Auschwitz'  and had a Zoom meeting. Nobody wrote up our thoughts. 

In September, because of the Coronavirus lockdown, the library didn't supply books, so we elected to read 'Where the Crawdads Sing' and again had a Zoom meeting. 

MS liked it, thought that it was exellent, liked the characters, liked the story, thought that it was believable. LS also liked the story and the descriptions and has even recommended it to another book club. 

CW thought that every cliche in the book was in this book, used very nicely. The friendly helpful Negro, the Atticus Finch lawyer, the bad boy and the good boy, lone girl makes good, all there. Very good, and worked well. As he said, the Author got away with it. 

Good descriptions of marsh life, I think he meant the wildlife.  Swamp Justice is what he called it, and was shocked that she got away with it.

AW said that the book spent a lot of time explaining why it wasn't possible, and then Kya did it. 

Chase was not a nice man. 

RP thought that kya looked at the situation like it was the animal world, remarking how the praying mantis ate her male partner. 

OL  thought that it ended like 'Transcriptions'. She enjoyed reading it, but criticisms came later.  As Maggie said, you had to suspend disbelief  while reading it.  I compared it to a Horatio Alger novel. 

Some of us though that it might have been Tate that murdered Chase. 

The people were real individuals. 

Kya was a victim of other peoples cowardice her whole life.

Grits, it wa siggested, were like Quinoa. Actually they are  a porrige made of fried cornmeal, commonly eaten for breakfast. 

Her  diet was discussed - Where did she get vitamins, she was lucky not to lose all her teeth at an early age, except that she didn't have sugar!

We had some discussion about whether this sort of thing could have happened in Britain, and wondered whether there were children in the wreckage of the East End of London post-war when there was very poor housing.

Marks: basically 9 with a couple of lower ones. 

2020- July - Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty

This month, instead of meeting in the evening at someones house, we met in a local park at 4 in the afternoon. I am told that it was an inspired suggestion. Two of us couldn't make it. 

We did remember to discuss the book, and when somebody sends me some notes on it I will post them. 

2020-June Liar by Steve Cavanagh

It has not been possible to get the paper books due to the Coronavirus lockdown so how we will get on at the next meeting remains to be seen.

I downloaded the sample kindle book. It was enough to make me want to get the rest.
Two men who grew up together in New York, one became a recovering lawyer whose wife has disappeared, the other a missing persons tracer who is very wealthy calls upon his childhood lawyer friend, at the same time as the lawyer is served with a sub-poena for a case he never saw. The rich mans daughter has disappeared and he has a letter about it.  Looks like a good read.

Not often we get a good thriller for the reading group. NY raised Lawyer Eddie Flynn called on by a boyhood friend to defend him on the charge of killing his daughter. It is a long and convoluted court case with fast car chases, and people who arn't what you first thought they were. Lennies wife had a sister who was a druggie and the case against her killing her daughter years ago comes up as a side issue and then gets to be part of the case. I'll read more of his. -9 Wonderful how this Irish author and lawyer can write of American Law.

2020 -May - The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

It is a first novel by this author

Very much the Hitchcock genre: person sees a murder through a window, isn’t believed because of drinking and psychological problems and after a spell of not believing it herself, has to prove it. I did hope it was going to veer from this but it didn’t. Even the eventual murderer came apparent fairly early on. I also felt the last dramatic scenes were written very much with an upcoming film in mind - especially the climbing onto the roof and the hand on the ankle. 

Her being a child psychologist didn’t add much for me, but I did like the back story of her family, and also GrannyLizzie. (But when her password is changed, who do you suspect but the youth. Especially with constant refrain of, such a nice boy). 

It was a page turner, but not particularly original. Anna was over-soppy. The police sloppy. David stroppy. (They should have asked him to produce the earring. What was his motivation to keep quiet ?)

This meeting was held on Zoom video conferencing software with 6 of us 'present'. It went well. 

We forgot to rate the book, but most people enjoyed it I think. 

April 2020- Becoming by Michelle Obama / MArch- Bird Box by Malerman

Ok, so we can't meet because of Coronovirus lockdown, but if you send me your impressions I'll  try and make a coherent document of it.

The Previous book 'Bird Box' by Josh Malerman was a book that no-one wanted to read after seeing the preview. We had read Room a year or so ago and thought that this would be on the same line. It was about people being cooped up, as we all are now. Here is the Amazon Review - Watch out for the Coronovirus!

"Most people ignored the outrageous reports on the news. But they became too frequent, they became too real. And soon, they began happening down the street. Then the Internet died. The television and radio went silent. The phones stopped ringing. And we couldn't look outside anymore.

Malorie raises the children the only way she can; indoors. The house is quiet. The doors are locked, the curtains are closed, mattresses are nailed over the windows. They are out there. She might let them in. The children sleep in the bedroom across the hall. Soon she will have to wake them. Soon she will have to blindfold them. Today they must leave the house. Today they will risk everything."

Becoming: My thoughts: 
It seems to me to be obviously ghost written, but it is an easy if long book. I skipped part of her upbringing, and by the time that they were esconced in the White House I had had enough. Obviously about the trials of being a partner to an untidy brilliant man who can't work to a clock. Even with those constraints it raises my esteem of Barack Obama.   Mark - 6

Other thoughts from Zoom on-line meeting
- We think it is written by a ghost writer. the way it is written is not how a person trained as a lawyer would write. 
- We got how she was reluctant to go to the White House
- It was informative rather than Literature (No Plot!)
-  Comments about how once she was in the white house, she wasn't allowed to just go into teh kitchen and make something for herself, she had to prepare a menu all the time. Before they went to the White House they had a chef to make their meals becasue they were so busy on the campaign trail, and they took him to the White House with them.
- Comparison between Alison son-in-law and Obama!

2020 February Trancription by Kate Atkinson

Minster Readers – February 2020    Transcription - Kate Atkinson

(Extract from the Guardian review, Sept 2018)

Transcription explores  the lies and inventions that make up a life, particularly during a time of war when all prior certainties – including identity – have been upended. Juliet Armstrong has more than her share of such lies. Recruited to the Secret Service at the beginning of the war, she has learned to shift between various names and personae. “And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the ‘real’ Juliet. But then what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?” The inventions she inhabits are created for her by others, mostly her male handlers at MI5, all of whom appear to be living fiendishly complex double or triple lives themselves. In the aftermath of war, trying to locate the source of an anonymous threat, Juliet finds the multiple deceptions she has practised,  and had practised upon her, accumulate to create a creeping paranoia in which “things are seldom what they seem’.

In 1940, Juliet is employed by MI5 to transcribe recordings of meetings in a bugged flat between a group of fascist sympathisers and a man named Godfrey Toby, whom the fifth columnists believe is a Gestapo agent but is actually a British spy monitoring his informers. Toby (who is based on a historical character) is a shadowy figure whose fate becomes entangled with Juliet’s through unexpected tragedy.

The second strand of the narrative, set in 1950, begins when Juliet – now working for the BBC – encounters Toby again, and his reappearance seems to trigger a series of reckonings for the lies she told during the war, and is possibly still telling.

This idea of consequences, and of every choice exacting a price later, runs through Transcription. Juliet’s inner commentary channels a British stoical humour, finding the absurd in the tragic even as she upbraids herself for being too “flippant”.

The main story is sandwiched between two short sections set in 1981, as Juliet lies dying she thinks back over her life. The year is significant; a royal wedding is imminent, and with it a new groundswell of patriotism: “... a sacrificial virgin was being prepared somewhere up the road, to satisfy the need for pomp and circumstance. Union Jacks draped everywhere.”
The question of sacrifice in the name of patriotism is one every character has to face, even as they must also define – then as now – what “England” and its values mean to them.



Minster Readers’ comments

We found this a complicated book to follow, set as it was in 3 different periods of time. It was difficult to keep track of the different men and their secret roles. It was also tricky to fathom which of them Juliet actually worked for. Although believable as a character, she too was a complex character: naïve, husband hunter or idealistic patriot? By the end of the book we wondered how reliable a narrator she had been throughout the story: she certainly by her own admission made up some of the transcriptions. She had, however, played her part in breaking  up a group of Nazi sympathisers even at the cost of lives – one of them innocent.
Opinions varied on whether it was  a complete page- turner or totally unmemorable. We agreed that there were some very amusing parts – especially in Juliet’s asides.

Scores : Average – 6   Range: 4-8

Our Book list for 2020

Minster Readers Book List 2020

Kate Atkinson                    Transcription                                      30/01/20

Josh Mallersman              Bird Box                                               27/02/20

Michelle Obama               Becoming                                            26/03/20

A.J. Finn                           Woman in the Window                       30/04/20

Steve Cavanagh                Liar                                                    28/05/20

Liane Moriarty                   Nine Perfect Strangers                     25/06/20

Heather Morris                 Tattooist of Auschwitz                      30/07/20

Celeste Ng                          Little Fires Everywhere                  27/08/20

Elly Griffiths                       Stranger Diaries                              24/09/20

Anthony Horowitz           Word is Murder                                   29/10/20

Edward Stourton              Auntie’s War                                      26/11/20

Raynor Winn                      Salt Path                                           17/12/20

Note that the date is  when the books are available. Our meetings are the last Thursday



























of each month  which is when the books are distributed as we discuss the previous book. 

Therefore Transcription was given out in January and discussed in February.