Calling all Book Clubs

The Ennis Book Club Festival is currently conducting research on adult book clubs nationwide via a book club questionnaire on their festival website.


http://www.ennisbookclubfestival.com/survey.php

All submissions welcome and all questionnaires received by 28th February 2011 will be entered in a draw for a prize of €50 book token.

October Book Club and last read of the year: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Amers hosted October's Book Club in Balbriggan and treated us to a lovely luncheon of Thai Green Vegetable Curry and Lime and Coriander Rice.  It has been a while since the last book club and we had decided to read Room by Emma Donoghue in the meantime. Those who read the book enjoyed it especially the use of the five-year-old as narrator. It was not without it flaws and the subject matter was dark but all agreed that the topic was handled well and the novel wasn't as dark as the subject matter would suggest.

Inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, the novel tells the story of Ma and Jack locked in a 11ft by 11ft room and their own private world. To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where she's been held since she was nineteen-for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him but Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation—and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely....Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience-and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

Definitely worth a read.

The next read for the last book club of the year has been decided on; it is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize (an award Ishiguro had previously won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day), for the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award and for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award. Time magazine named it the best novel of 2005 and included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It also received an ALA Alex Award in 2006. It was made into a film directed by Mark Romanek in 2010.
‘A clear frontrunner to be the year’s most extraordinary novel . . . Not since The Remains of the Day has Ishiguro written about wasted lives with such finely gauged forlornness.' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times. In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.
Amazon.co.uk

This book will be discussed at Christmas Book Club on Saturday 11th December to be hosted by yours truly.

Bord Gais Energy Book Club

Bord Gais have launched their online book club at http://www.bordgaisenergybookclub.ie/

To celebrate the launch of our book club, they are giving away a book light to new members on joining. By joining their book club you have the option to:


Rate and recommend books your favourite books

Post your thoughts to the forum

Suggest a book for Laura's Corner

Nominate your own book club

The book club will feature a rotating panel of reviewers including Bert Wright who is the administrator of the Irish Book Awards, a celebrity author and a librarian from one of the 369 public libraries in Ireland.


They are trying to establish Bord Gáis Energy Book Club as a great source of information for book clubs in Ireland.

The results of their online survey have just been announced and have found that the Irish are still big readers with nearly three in every four reading six or more books a year. It also found that we Irish like to hoard our books with 72% having at least 50 books on our shelves and 42% of us having more than 100. More than half of us put the book on our shelves when finished reading, only 1% throw it out while more than one third swap with friends and 13% donate to charity. The bed is still the most popular reading place according to 56%, followed by the sitting room with 25% and 18% prefer to read while commuting. Despite the advent of e-readers and iPads, 95% still prefer the paperback. Among the top ten books we would take to a desert island are Life of Pi, Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Rings, Ulysses, the Bible and How to Survive on a Desert Island. We are nothing if not practical!