ENGLISH MUM: never knowingly undercatered

Righto, then.  Our book for September: the most votes went to Rebecca’s Tale by Sally Beauman.  Available from Play.com used from £2.49/€4.48 with free delivery, on Amazon.co.uk for £5.99 and Amazon.com for $7.99.  Easons (reputable Irish bookshop) are stocking it at €11.10.  There’s also tons on Ebay if you fancy trying your hand at bidding.  Amazon describes it as an ‘ambitious sequel to Daphne du Maurier’s much-loved ‘Rebecca’ with reviews ranging from ‘gripping’ to ‘arrogant’.  The original was one of my favourite books, so let’s hope Beauman can do it justice.

As usual, new members are very welcome.  We’ll regroup at the end of September to chew the cud, touch base, think outside the box, and other such meaningless statements.  Off you trot, then.

Righty ho, then.  I can’t really call this our August book as I was rather late finishing, so I’ll just go with ‘next’ instead.

Recent suggestions have included:

Rebecca’s Tale by Sally Beauman (hat tip, Jen)

Body Surfing or Light on Snow by Anita Shreve (Aidan)

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (Baino)

Bad Food Britain by Joanna Blythman (Ned Flanders Wee Jen)

A Free Range Childhood by Matthew Appleton (Tara)

Passing for Normal  by Amy Wilensky (Tracey)

I quite fancy something historical - maybe a Phillippa Gregory as recommended by Loops.  Votes, then, or any other suggestions via comment or email please.  Ta everso.

CAUTION: SPOILERS!

Right, so.  Bit late here, but our July book was The Resurrectionist by James Bradley.  Admittedly I got this late and had to force myself to read it over one weekend but ‘force’ is definitely the right word.  I found that the old fashioned language, although no doubt authentic, quite awkward:

‘It is three months since I came here, apprenticed to my master’s side so I might learn his trade.’

I really, really enjoyed the descriptions of London in the early 1800s - he went into great detail about how they lived, what they ate, the people, the places - this was by far the most enjoyable part of the book for me.  However I didn’t really think there was much of a plot: orphaned chap comes to London, works for anatomist, gets in a fight (why did he just not tell his boss what happened for God’s sake?  He’d already had the fight with the bloke so knew he could handle him), gets with an actress/prostitute, is devastated when her friend dies (why?), loses his job, descends into opium addiction (I hated this - aren’t you supposed to like your hero?  I didn’t like him at all - I have no sympathy for drug addicts, either in the early 19th century or today), gets in with a bad crowd, robs graves, murders people, then whoosh, he’s off to Australia (bit confusing, that, as he’s not convicted for the murders but for being a ‘vagabond’), falls in love with this girl, doesn’t get together with her and that’s it.

Am I missing something?  Did you get through it?  And if so, what did you think?  And what’s for our next book?  Something perky, please!

Yeh, sorry about that - I had it delivered over to me Ma’s and she only brought it over yesterday so I’m a bit behind.  I’ll get reading straight away.

Right, so.  Thanks for all your input regarding our June book.  It was really interesting (if somewhat hard work) to read a book I wouldn’t normally have picked, and to see what everyone else thought of it too.  I note that we were all pretty much in the same ball park with our comments.

So, due to popular demand, our July book will be (cue fanfare): The Resurrectionist by James Bradley (sorry about the crap photo, it’s the only one I could find).

Purchased new from Amazon, this book comes in at £3.86, but P&P to Ireland adds a huge £4.98, bringing the total to £8.84 (although in the UK if you go mad and spend £15 you get free delivery - the evil monkeys, they know we will).  The Book Depository comes in at a far more reasonable £5.89 including free worldwide delivery.  Ebay are showing several, but all in the UK and again postage makes Amazon and The Book Depository look a better deal.  However, the winner seems to be Play.com which advertise the book at £3.99 (€5.49!) with free delivery to many European countries (not US or Canada guys, sorry) including Ireland (AND the Vatican!  Wow, I wonder if de Holy Father uses Play.com?).  If anyone has any trouble, email me and I’ll order you a copy and send it on.

My favourite Amazon review is by someone called ‘TonyD’ who said, and I quote ‘this scared the pants off me’.  It was also described by The Telegraph as a ‘classically claustrophobic gothic chiller’, so we certainly didn’t go at all girlie for July did we?!

Anyhoo, read it whilst hiding under the duvet, and we’ll report back at the end of the month for what we do best, a little conflab.  Off ye go, then.

Righty ho, then.  The very first challenge for our fledgling book group was Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. 

First off, I would say that this is not my usual reading material, which tends to be either cookery books or nasty, grisly Mark Billingham-esque murder mysteries.  Having said that, the whole point of a book club is to challenge oneself to read books outside one’s ‘comfort zone’ shall we say.  I suppose I enjoyed this book; I liked Fuller’s honest, nostalgia-free style of writing and found her descriptions of her childhood Africa highly evocative.  I found the way she wrote of the loss of two of her siblings incredibly moving.  I didn’t, however, find it a page-turner and felt that I was forcing myself through it.  I also found some of the language and opinions unpalatable (well, we’re talking white settlers in 1970s Rhodesia with the inevitable black household staff, to be fair).  She relates all this, however uncomfortable, without judgment or criticism, and I like the fact that the reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

So.  If you read it, what did you think?  And any views on our next foray into the heady world of literature?  Nutty reckons we should go with something lighter and, dare we say, girlie, seeing as it’s the summer.  Anyone want to suggest something they fancy reading?

So I love it when someone new comments on one of my random ramblings, and then we all trot off to have a read of their blog.  My core list of favourite blogs gets bigger all the time.  I also love it when I’m reading one of said favourite blogs and there’s one of my little gang of commenters commenting on their blog too!  It’s like a big, incestuous (but not in a pervy way),  blogging family.

Thus, having arrived over at Parlez Vous Moo in exactly this manner, I discovered that The Nutty One is off on her hols to Kenya, and all her commenters have been recommending reading material.  There are some real classics there, such as Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife which gave me goosebumps, classic Bill Bryson, such as The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and loads of other stuff I’ve never tried.  So then I thought, seeing as we’re such a nice, friendly, and ever-expanding group of chumlies, that we should have A BOOK CLUB!

Yep, our very own, grown up, book club.  We can all have a waffle about books we’d like to read/books that we’ve heard are good, etc, etc, choose a book, then all bugger off for a month (or however long) to pore over it, then regroup to discuss our findings in a very intellectual and grown up kind of manner.    And by that I mean actually go and buy, steal, beg or borrow the book and actually commit to reading it, proper like.   So what do you reckon then?  Who’s in?