The Girl on the Train

'And Then There Were None' by Agatha Christie was enjoyed by all, maybe a book club first? There were discussions on what part was scariest and if it was possible to guess the murderer. 

Book for next meeting is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Meeting 7pm on the 9th of December, at the Rookery (69 Clapham Common South Side, SW4 9DA). Find us upstairs!

Other books pitched:
Before I Go to Sleep - SJ Watson
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
The Truth of the Harry Quebec Affair - Joel Dicker
The Immitable Jeeves - PG Woodhouse

Summer Read Meeting! A Place of Greater Safety

On the 6th of December we shall finally have our meeting for the summer read! We are meeting at La Bonne Heure on Abbeville Rd to feast of French food while discussing the book.

Book: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

Place: La Bonne Heure, 31 Abbeville Road, SW4 9LA

Time: 1pm

And Then There Were None - Next Meeting!

Book for the next meeting: 

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. A classic crime novel that has been voted a world favourite.

Other books pitched:
I, Lucifer - Glen Duncan
The Inimitable Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
The Circle - Dave Eggars
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba
The Correction - Janthan Franzen


Meeting on the 18th of November, 7pm at the Rookery, find us in the upstairs room.
69 Clapham Common South Side, SW4 9DA - between clapham common and clapham south tube station

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe, 29th October

There were quite strong opinions about The 100 Year Old Man.... possibly an equal balance of lovers and haters! Think it depended whether you enjoyed the knowing tone and leftfield telling of 20th century history or thought it was all a bit Forrest Gump and didn't really work.

Book for next time is:

Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

It was close with excellent pitches for:

To rise again at a decent hour by Joshua Ferris
The Wrong Boy by Willy Russell
A Grain Of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman

The Craft Beer Co is not a great winter pub as not much space inside if it's raining. But The King's Head is open again so let's go there. (confusingly now called King and Co but is definitely open http://thekingandco.uk/) 100 Clapham Park Road, SW4 7BZ. On Wednesday 29th October.

And for next time, we agreed to pitch books that engage with the Gothic with a view to going to this exhibition at the British Library
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/gothic/index.html
Most suitable as it'll be nearly Hallowe'en...

Also, there was some Facebook discussion about moving the start time back to 7.30. Have gone for leaving it as 7pm but we won't start talking about the book till at least 7.45pm

Next meeting: The Hundred-Year-Old Man...(9th October)

Sorry for the hiatus in postings to the blog. At some point, can attempt to do some backfill if anyone's interested in what has been read in the intervening months!

Anyway, next meeting we will be talking about The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. On a Thursday...sorry, Wednesday fans - we will return to normal next time.
 
From 7 pm; 9th October, at Craft Beer Co, 128 Clapham Manor Street SW4 6ED

We had a tie for the next book for first time in ages with The Hundred...pipping The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky to the post in a second round of voting. As exciting as the Scottish referendum..

Other books suggested were:
Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
Hullabalo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai

Last meeting we talked about The Bunker Diary. Not sure we agreed on questions including whether it's too bleak for a YA book, if there's hope in it (as the author claims), how much it's about religion...but maybe that's the point of discussing something!

Christmas party time!

Yes it's that time of year again - time for our Christmas Do! Sadly Rebartos in Vauxhall where we have made merry in recent years has closed down (she wipes a tear from her eye) so this year we are heading to deepest, darkest Camberwell Green to scoff yummy cheap Italian food and drink at Caravaggio's, Camberwell Church Rd https://plus.google.com/117032867874479038038/about?gl=uk&hl=en

If you would like to come (everyone welcome) please join the event asap and I'll book us a table.  Date is Monday 9th December, 7.30pm.

Please don't forget to bring a book for our secret book santa! Can be anything, pre-loved and new either is fine, just wrap it up to prolong the suspense!

Watch out!

Totally divided opinion on Women in White! Those who finished it absolutely loved it but others found it a bit of a struggle (for various reasons). If you know you like Victorian melodrama I'd say go for it! Second round voting this week and the next read is 'Watching the English' by Kate Fox. Other suggestions were: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Canada by Richard Ford The Turn of the Screw by Henry James Next meeting is 4th December, at The King's Head, 100 Clapham Park Rd as usual.  Look out for the Christmas meal post, two meetings so close to each other - lucky us. Ha ha, sorry about the photo but I couldn't resist this image that came with the search for English people! Apparently it's the preparations for the New Year's Day Swim 2013 - go lads!