MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Hey Bookclubbers!

Just wanted to wish you all a very merry christmas and a happy new year.

Hope to catch up with you all in 2008!

Take Care,
Val

Im back

To all the girls!!!! Thanks to miss Patton..Im back on the blog! Havnt even got the book yet...will do! See ya'll on 10th.

Hi Ladies

Thanks for that Trish, promise I will read the book this month!! And see Im keeping my blogging promise, though its early days yet......

November/December Read

Hi girls,

This months read comes courtesy of K, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature).

Widely regarded as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writer's block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. In fear of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. The black notebook addresses her problems as a writer; the red her political life; the yellow her relationships and emotions; and the blue becomes a diary of everyday events. But it is the fifth notebook -- the Golden Notebook -- which is the key to her recovery and renaissance. Bold and illuminating, fusing sex, politics, madness and motherhood, 'The Golden Notebook' is at once a wry and perceptive portrait of the intellectual and moral climate of the 1950s -- a society on the brink of feminism -- and a powerful and revealing account of a woman searching for her own personal and political identity.

[Image and synopsis taken from: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Notebook-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0007247206/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-8872845-0426836?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194345828&sr=8-1]

Hey Ladies!

Well hopefully after a summer of gluttony we are ready to become bookworms again! I found the latest book (bought in last week in local shop was promo with the Indo) to be good, thought initially it had more potential but not altogether certain my initial reaction is correct. It's a good read with great themes throughout female friendships, mother - daughter relationships, ageing, death, birth, love and finding your path in life!!

So I've just finished it last night during a flight delay at Brussels airport, I suppose being adopted I had hoped for more from it but found it gave me more questions than answers. But in retrospect I think thats what book's main theme was: questioning your life and they relationships that affect it. So there you go am not gonna give away any plot etc.

Also I have to say one of the characters reminded me of someone.................

Sinead

Summer Reading

Hi All,

To give the blog a new purpose and hopefully get people commenting, I thought I'd start a new post on what everyone read over the summer.

September/October Read

Hi All,

The book for this month is Venus Reborn by Martina Devlin as suggested by Shinners who I quote "Think I may have found a book to rival The Red Tent".

There's no shame in being adopted. It means you were wanted. And chosen.

Venus Macken is back in Ireland after more than a decade as a city girl in London, and she has mixed feelings about the move. Except her return to the wilds of Roancarrick to care for her elderly father offers the chance to search for answers. Answers to questions that have haunted her all her life. Venus is tired of feeling like an outsider. Who was her birth mother? Why was she abandoned? Surely the people who love her and reared her can help unlock the riddle of her identity. Meanwhile there are distractions, among them enigmatic artist Conor Landers who has bolted to Roancarrick to escape the consequences of a life and death decision. As the sketchy details of what happened on a stormy night 32 years before take shape, Venus begins to realise that who she is matters less than understanding who she wants to be.

Information and Image taken from:

http://www.martinadevlin.com/venus-reborn.html

July/August Read: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Hi All,

This months read is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is his eagerly anticipated follow-up to the brilliant first novel The Kite-Runner.

A Thousand Splendid Suns focuses on mothers and daughters, and friendships between women. It is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 22 May 2007

Links:

- Read an interview with the author, available on

http://www.amazon.co.uk/

- Download the first chapter

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/uk-books/images/ATSSChap1.pdf

- Website dedicated to the author

http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

May/June Read: Half of a Yellow Sun

Hi All,

I'm not sure if we're meeting in May or June but the read for this month is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanad Ngozi Adichie.

This highly anticipated novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character.As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: Jan 2007

Links:
- http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/ - website dedicated to the book
-http://www.harperperennial.co.uk/books.aspx?id=32636 - read chapter one online
-http://preview.tinyurl.com/2jvtlm Amazon reviews
-http://www.readinggroups.co.uk/guides/Recommended.aspx?id=32636&articleid=7329 - reading group guide

K

back!

hi girls ,
Im back (thanks Trish!). Thanks for organising the play on Friday Kathryn. Sorry for dashing out on you. Looking forward to this months read and bookclub on 23rd!
see you all then,
val

February read

Hi All,

For those of you lucky enough to miss Anna Karenina on Friday night, The Map of Love was picked as our Feb read. Lots of very interesting books were suggested for the Feb read (details below). We didn't discuss any of our Christmas reads so please try and post comments to the blog at http://fullmoonbookclub.blogspot.com/2006/12/christmas-bookclub.html

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
In 1900, Lady Anna Winterbourne travels to an Egypt under British occupation. There she falls in love with Sharif al-Baroudi, an Egyptian patriot utterly committed to the cause of his country's freedom. A hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif, goes to Egypt, taking with her an old family trunk. The notebooks and journals she finds in the trunk will reveal her ancestors' lives and will profoundly affect her own. (Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/mapoflove

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins was recently voted one of the world's top three intellectuals (alongside Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky) by "Prospect" magazine. As the author of many, now famous, classic works on science and philosophy, he has always asserted the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm it has inflicted on society. He now turns his fierce intellect exclusively on this subject, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes. While Europe is becoming increasingly secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dramatically and dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, and elsewhere, a vigorous dispute between 'intelligent design' and Darwinism is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science. In many countries religious dogma from medieval times still serves to abuse basic human rights such as women's and gay rights. And all from a belief in a God whose existence lacks evidence of any kind.Dawkins attacks God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed, cruel tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign, but still illogical, Celestial Watchmaker favoured by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children. In "The God Delusion" Dawkins presents a hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types and does so in the lucid, witty and powerful language for which he is renowned. It is a brilliantly argued, fascinating polemic that will be required reading for anyone interested in this most emotional and important subject. (Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/goddelusion)

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Aichie
The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili's world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her repressive and fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, and more prayer. When Nigeria begins to fall apart during a military coup, Kambili's father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends Kambili and her brother away to live with their aunt. In this house, full of energy and laughter, she discovers life and love - and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family. Centring on the promise of freedom and the pain and exhilaration of adolescence, Purple Hibiscus is the extraordinary debut of a remarkable new talent. (Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/purplehibiscus)

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
The diary of Jean-Dominique Bauby who, with his left eyelid (the only surviving muscle after a massive stroke) dictated a remarkable book about his experiences locked inside his body.On 8 December 1995, Bauby suffered a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. When he regained consciousness three weeks later, the only muscle left functioning was in his left eyelid, although his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been. He spent most of 1996 writing this book, letter by letter, blinking as an alphabet was repeatedly read out to him. "The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly" was published in France on Thursday 6th March 1997. It achieved instant success. Then, three days later, Bauby died. "The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly", which records Bauby's lonely existence, is a book about the triumph of the human spirit and the ability to invent a life for oneself in the most appalling of circumstances.

Unstolen by Wendy Jean
The thing about being the unstolen one is that you'd better be strong, you'd better stay safe, you'd better not rock any boats or surely they will sink. People depend on you, people who can't take any more stress in their lives and you'd better count yourself lucky because after all, you weren't taken, you're still here and you better be grateful for all that's been given to you because your brother sure didn't get anything ...Bethany Fisher's life has always been overshadowed by her missing brother. Four-year-old Michael was abducted when Bethany was a baby and no trace of him was ever found. Twenty years later, Bethany is a college graduate and has a small son of her own. But her life is thrown into turmoil one evening when her mother follows a man home from the supermarket and savagely beats him to death. What could have made this mild, middle-aged woman suddenly snap? Packing the emotional punch of "The Lovely Bones", this powerful novel explores how the comforting lies we tell ourselves can be ultimately more destructive than confronting difficult truths. (Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/unstolen)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
"It's just a small story, really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery ..." Narrated in the all-knowing matter-of-fact voice of Death, witnessing the story of the citizens of Molching. When nine-year-old Liesal arrives outside the boxlike house of her new foster parents at 33 Himmel Street, she refuses to get out of the car. Liesel has been separated from her parents - "Kommunists" - for ever, and at the burial of her little brother, she steals a gravedigger's instruction manual which she can't read. It is the beginning of her illustrious career. In the care of the Hubermans, Liesel befriends blond-haired Rudy Steiner, her neighbour obsessed with Jesse Owens, and the mayor's wife, who hides from despair in her library. Together Liesel and Rudy steal books - from Nazi book burning piles, from the mayor's library, from the rich people for whom her fostermother does the ironing. In time, they take in a Jewish boxer, Max, who reads with Liesel in the basement. By 1943, the Allied bombs are falling, and the sirens begin to wail. Liesel shares out her books in the air-raid shelters.But one day in the life of Himmel street, the wail of the sirens comes too late ... A life-changing tale of the cruel twists of fate and the coincidences on which all our lives hinge, this is also a joyous look at how books can nourish the soul. Its uplifting ending will make all readers weep.
(Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/bookthief)

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
1867, Canada - As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime, or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a forgotten Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good. In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation and humour into a panoramic historical romance, an exhilarating thriller, a keen murder mystery and ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, one of the books of the year.(Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/tendernessofwolves)

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that sixty-five years later, "Suite Francaise" would be published for the first time, and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, "Suite Francaise" falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion and make their way through the chaos of France; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected. Nemirovsky's brilliance as a writer lay in her portrayal of people, and this is a novel that teems with wonderful characters, each more vivid than the next. Haughty aristocrats, bourgeois bankers and snobbish aesthetes rub shoulders with uncouth workers and bolshy farmers.Women variously resist or succumb to the charms of German soldiers. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places. Irene Nemirovsky conceived of "Suite Francaise" as a four- or five-part novel. It was to be a symphony - her War and Peace. Although only two sections were finished before her tragic death, they form a book that is beautifully complete in itself, and awe-inspiring in its understanding of humanity.(Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/suitefrancaise)

Night by Elie Wiesel
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of people from a survivor's perspective, "Night" is among the most personal, intimate and poignant of all accounts of the Holocaust. A compelling consideration of the darkest side of human nature and the enduring power of hope, it remains one of the most important works of the twentieth century.(Reviews: http://www.tiny.cc/night272)

Other books we read in January

Just thought it would be a good idea to start a posting for you to contribute comments on other books you read during January.

K

Book Suggestions for February meeting

Hi all ,

To add your suggestion for the Feb read just select to add a comment to this post. See you all at the Jan meeting.

K