The Year in Review

Looking back over the last year, here is what we have read so far:

1. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

2. The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

3. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke

5. While I was Gone by Sue Miller

6. The Undomesticated Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

7. One of the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's Series - The Mis-education Years; The Teenage Dirtbag Years; The Orange Mocha-Chip Frappucino Years; PS, I Scored the Bridesmaids; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress

8. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

9. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

10. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse OR Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thompson

11. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

12. The Mermaids Chair by Sue Monk Kidd OR Marley & Me by John Grogan OR Theft by Peter Carey

I think I've covered them all. Please vote for your favorite book and here's to many more years of reading!!

Anniversary Bookclub Meeting

Hi girls,

Well it's official - our bookclub is one year old. The anniversary meeting took place on Monday 28th August and was kindly hosted by Lisa.

The books for this month were The Mermaids Chair, Theft and Marley & Me so lots of choice for everyone. I found the Mermaids Chair to be a bit disappointing after reading and loving Sue Monk Kidds first book, The Secret Life of Bees. This book was very different. I guess I found the story a little morbid. It reminded me a little of While I Was Gone by Sue Miller with similar stories of marriage difficulties during the empty nest phase. Unusual in the way both novels focused on the woman's dissatisfaction with their lives. I did like the fact that at the back of the book was useful notes about the book, Reading group questions and an interview with the Author.

Debs read Marley & Me and really enjoyed it. It is one for the animal lovers among you.

For those of you who couldn't attend on Monday, please feel free to add your thoughts on the books.

August Recommended Reads

Hi All!

Hope you enjoyed last night, and as promised the list for August, just choose whichever takes your fancy and we'll have loads to discuss at Anniversary meeting! So enjoy .....

1) The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint, who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.When Jessie is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother’s seemingly inexplicable act of violence, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life “molded to the smallest space possible.” Jessie loves Hugh, but once on the island, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is soon to take his final vows. Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right and the immutable force of home and marriage. Is the power of the mermaid chair only a myth? Or will it alter the course of Jessie’s life? What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, allow Jessie to make a marriage unto herself.Where does the yearning for soul-mated love come from? When it comes to love, what are the pulls inside a woman between the ordinary and the sublime? The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about mermaids and saints, about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body, brilliantly illuminating the awakening of a woman to her own deepest self.

2) Theft by Peter Carey

I don't know if my story is grand enough to be a tragedy, although a lot of shitty stuff did happen. It is certainly a love story but that did not begin until midway through the shitty stuff, by which time I had not only lost my eight-year-old son, but also my house and studio in Sydney where I had once been as famous as a painter could expect in his own backyard ...'So begins Peter Carey's highly charged and lewdly funny new novel. Told by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones and his 'damaged 220-pound brother' Hugh, it recounts their adventures and troubles after Butcher's plummeting prices and spiralling drink problem force them to retreat to northern New South Wales. Here the formerly famous artist is reduced to being a caretaker for his biggest collector, and the nurse for his erratic brother. Then the mysterious Marlene turns up one stormy night, clad in a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Claiming that the brothers' friend and neighbour owns an original Jacques Liebovitz, she soon sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making or ruin of them all. Once again displaying Peter Carey's extraordinary flair for language, "Theft" is a love poem of a very different kind. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo - and exploring themes of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption - this is a great novel which will also make you laugh out loud.


3) Marley & Me by John Grogan

John and Jenny were just beginning their life together. They were young and in love, with a perfect little house and not a care in the world. Then they bought home Marley, a wiggly yellow fur ball of a puppy. Life would never be the same. Marley quickly grew into a barrelling, ninety-seven pound steamroller of a Labrador retriever, a dog like no other. He crashed through screen doors, gouged through drywall, flung drool on guests, stole women's undergarments, and ate nearly everything he could get his mouth around, including couches and fine jewellery. Obedience school did no good - Marley was expelled. Neither did the tranquilisers the veterinarian prescribed for him with the admonishment, 'Don't hesitate to use these.' And yet Marley's heart was pure. Just as he joyfully refused any limits on his behaviour, his love and loyalty were boundless, too. Marley shared the couple's joy at their first pregnancy, and their heartbreak over the miscarriage. He was there when babies finally arrived and when the screams of a seventeen-year-old stabbing victim pierced the night. Unconditional love, they would learn, comes in many forms. This is the heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.