The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd

With 15 attendees, this was by far our largest group ever ! We missed Ulrika...get well soon!!

Sorry to wake you up, didn't know that you were unwell :( and so sorry that you're not there as I had brought some champagne since it's my last book club night. We're leaving the first week of April. Let's make sure we have a night out before we go.

So as far as the book goes, we all loved it. The story of a Scottish woman who travels to China to marry - a decision she comes to regret. She begins a passionate affair with an aristocratic Japanese soldier, but when she gets pregnant, her life takes on a course she never imagined it would. Written in letters and diary entries, we follow Mary's journey to Japan. She has and loses contact with two children and becomes a successful business woman.  The cast of characters is rich and eclectic. Mary is a strong woman constrained by the conventions of the era and culture of the country.

We ate carrot and coriander soup (with Ginger!) by Tse Ching

This was my first actual attendance at this famous book club and it was great, despite the absence of its warm hearted hostess.
The book was a well written page turner with a formidable Scottish heroine whose story had me gripped from beginning to end.  Highly recommended especially for those who have an interest in historical novels with strong themes.

Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

We had a mixed reaction of to this quirky off beat romance between Benny the muddy farmer and Shrimp the grey, cereberal librarian city girl.  An easy read, but one where the ending was slightly unsatisfying. Translated from Swedish, we discussed language and the translation and how that impacted on our enjoyment of the book. Some found it clunky and others too coloquial.

There was debate about whether we empathised with the hardworking country farmer or the intelligent, book loving career girl. Neither seemed able to compromise their lifestyle for the other, despite their deep love for each other.

Ovaries featured quite highly in the book, although the Swedes amongst us insisted this wasn't normal conversational topic for them!.



We ate tomato soup and dark chocolate.

"A good book, not brilliant"

Rating 3/5  

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

We were all moved by this autobiographical story of a very nomadic and unusual childhood. Jeanette Walls' parents could be described as unconventional at best and narcissistic and abusive at worst. She tells of how they were always on the move (usually because her father had got himself into some kind of trouble) through her early childhood, the 4 children and their parents from one depressing hicksville town to another, via sojourns in the desert. On the positive side, the children learned to make do with almost no material possessions and to be incredibly in tune with the natural world, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of nature. They learned to be more self sufficient than we can easily imagine, given the cossetted nature of our own childrens' lives. We were taken aback by the resilience of the children, when they were often cold, hungry and in physical danger. There were comments that the author's lack of obvious judgement of her parents became a bit hard to believe and also that the denoement of the novel was weak, with us having little insight into how she and her siblings managed to carve out such successful lives in New York. However, these were relatively minor criticisms and overall this is highly recommended.
Some of us also really liked the playful and happy way she described her sometimes tragic episodes in her early childhood, without any trace of bitterness. The way she saw it all like an adventure and never felt neglected in her early childhood, even though she clearly was in many ways. On an educational point of view they really did an amazing job, leaving some of us feeling a bit short changed as parents. Personally i felt like a very good mother reading about how Jennette's mum was. That is always a good thing in my view.

The Butter nut squash Soup was made by Roo and delicous. Present was Annelie, Tziching, Ulrika, Roo, Katheryn, Clair and for th efirst time Veena and Bavani.

Rating 4 out of 5.

Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

 
Tuesday 15th of November 2011
This is a book that you have to struggle through in the beginning. Don't give up it's wonderful. You become immersed in the story of the tough little tomboy  Liesle, her adoptive family the Hubermans and the boy next door, Rudy. The fact that the book describes Hitlers effect on the local Germans' family life shines through now and then but you tend to ignore this, because it's to depressing to take in; you just want to be a fly on the Hubermanns wall and see what's coming up next. The story is told from the perspective of "death" , which we felt was the worse aspect of the book - none of us could see the point of  Death being the narrator and we felt his monologues tended to be cliched. However, leaving this aside, the Book Thief is a powerful and moving story about first love, and humanity shining through in the most desperate circumstances.
We all liked it and were wondering if it will make it to the big screen like the last two books we read.

The soup complimented the conversation very well Ulrika's delicious lentil soup.

One Day by David Nicholls

We read One Day in June 2011 after being tipped off by a few other readers. I was very impressed by the gripping story although it was so "girl next door" kind of a story. We have all been there in terms of being young in London so it was great to relive the ups and down being young, poor and sometimes disillusioned. The way the disaster was described was very powerful in the non-event way it was described. Some hated it but I loved it. So matter of fact without any extra drama added. So totally unpredicted and unexpected.  We all agreed that we would have hated the guy, but kind of liked him because Emma did. The characterisations where really well done.
I am sorry, I forgot who attended since it was such a long time ago the meeting was, but we promise to get better on updating the blog. Today we are discussing The book thief over a bowl of lentil soup and red wine.

The Help

We read "The Help" in July and it was another unanimous success. The book is set in the deep South of America in the 1960's when the times were..very slowly..changing. It concerns a group of white women and the often very complicated relationships they have with their black maids. One of the white women who has aspirations to become an author has the idea of recording the experiences of the black maids in a book, an undertaking ripe with potential problems and dangers; this was a time when the Ku Klux Klan was prominent and Blacks who stepped out of line were regularly met with violent retribution.
As the maids' stories unfold, the reader realises that although appalling maltreatment and double standards certainly did exist, that there are more positive stories also, where there is something akin to love between the women, however unequal their status. White women of the time were expected to play second fiddle to their men and themselves had fairly restricted lives, which were defined by clear social mores.So in some sense, there was perhaps more common ground than might be immediately obvious.
The book provides a fascinating social  commentary of an interesting period of American history and it is obviously deeply personal to the author who herself grew up in the deep South.
Overall, highly recommended.