Book Club - September 2011

Our book for September was Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant. As I had read this way back in August (on holiday) and really enjoyed it I volunteered to "lead" the discussion and what an easy task it was this month. For the first time ever we had a unanimous like from every Book Club member.

The story is set in a convent following the story of the young Seraphina sent to the convent under duress and Zuana who has been in the convent for a number of years. To start with the story and descriptions are a bit slow but after a while I loved the detail and complexity of the relationships and politics of convent life.

If you haven't read it but decide to, then really do stick with it as it does take a while "to get going" but by the end you won't be able to turn the pages quick enough. Oh and if you are put off by the potential religious nature of the book - don't be because in a funny way it's not actually that religious even though it's about nuns!

Only minor disagreement we had at Book Club was that some liked the ending some not.

I was very glad that we have a member who studies Italian to tell us how to correctly pronounce all the names - and what beautiful names -  Seraphina, Zuana, Magdalena, Chiara (by the way if you know how to say chianti then you know how to pronouce Chiara).

So a resounding success. I'd really like to go back and read it again one day.

For anyone who is interested here are my questions for the evening although I hardly needed to lead the discussion because we all had so much to talk about (not always the case):

Did we like it?
Would you prefer to go into a convent or be married off?
Do you think convents are that political?
Did you like the ending?
Did you think Zuana should have kept the secret?
Did you feel sorry for the Abbess?
Did you get much sense that it was set in 1570 or was it timeless?
Was it a shame that Zuana was there - would she have been happier "outside"?

Book Club - August 2011

I have been going to our village book club since it's inception and we have read some great books, some OK books and some I've not even bothered to finish!

I've decided I will start adding my thoughts (very minimal) on our books here on the blog as we go along. I never seem to be able to think of anything very insightful when I'm at the meetings so maybe jotting it down before I go will help .... ?

Our book for August was One Day by David Nichols.

I really enjoyed this, probably in part because the previous month we had read The Children's Book by A S Byatt, well I say "we had read" I never finished it. Too many characters, too convoluted, too everything. So One Day came along and it was just two characters, a love story, set in an era I remember so it was already looking better than the previous month. I also found the characters engaging and "real".

I normally find this diary format way of writing really annoying and feel it is a bit of a "cop out" but surprisingly this didn't annoy me. Perhaps it was because the reader had to imagine/fill in the past twelve months or because the way it was written it was relatively easy to piece together what had happened in the intervening months?

And there is a film which some of our book club members have already seen, so it will be interesting to hear their review. I've heard that apparently tissues are in order as it's a real tear jerker and you have to ignore the accents (or lack of). Think I'll go and see it soon {any excuse to go out & love going to the pictures}.