Pure and simple

Lovely to see a great turnout again, including the (almost) fictional Pete.

We had an interesting discussion about the Poisonwood bible, which lived up to it's reputation as being a really good book fro book groups to read.

Now you know what shaped leaf to avoid in the jungle

The book for next time is Pure and we'll be meeting on Thursday 15th of March in Mango Landin from 7.30ish.

Runners up were The Autumn of the Patriarchs, What is the What, The Bone People, Zeitoun, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Tale of Two Cities, We need to Talk about Kevin and King Leopald's Ghost.

(and as a slight plug - something I mentioned about the Congo's debt - the UK brought in a law to stop vulture funds using our courts to prey on developing countries. However this doesn’t yet apply to Jersey. Right now, vulture fund FG Hemisphere is using Jersey’s courts to claim $100m from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They bought this debt for just $3.3m.  - there's more info about that and an action here )

paved with good intentions...

Hi everyone,
yet again Pete failed to turn up (some excuse about a leaving do) so now I'm writing about myself in the third person and posting Simon's update from facebook:

It was another bumper meeting this week, with new faces outnumbering established members, so a big welcome to everyone who came along for the first time!

Despite picking holes in the plot and questioning the realism, everyone seemed to enjoy The Talented Mr. Ripley. However, after the discussion on split personalities and identity confusion I fear that some began to doubt my protestations that I’m not Pete Taylor, I haven’t been forging his blog entries, and that time I was caught trying on his clothes was nothing but a big misunderstanding…

We’ll next be meeting on the 23rd of February 7.30pm in Mango Landin, to discuss The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Apparently this book has been chosen by the group before (back in 2010), but that's no reason not to enjoy it again! The other nominations were:

• The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (again!) 
• The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz 
• If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino
•  The Easter Parade by Richard Yates 
• The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On a final note I'll add that as it's near the beginning of the year I get lots of emails from new members - please just turn up (preferably with an idea about what to read next time) and look out for the people with the books, we're a friendly bunch and there's no rules about joining - there's also the Clapham Book group   which is worth checking out too.

New year resolutions

Hi everyone,
apologies for the lack of updates, the blog moderator (Pete) has been off and about, but is now back and catching up with the backlog of 'is the book group still running?' (yes! yay!) type emails.

Thanks to Simon for organising the Christmas / new year stuff - report from last time / meeting details for next time are:

A Sense of an Ending was a popular choice, as evidenced by the number of people who chose to brave the winds and the rain to make the first meeting of 2012! The next meeting will be on Thursday the 26th of January, when we'll be discussing The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

The other nominations were Waterline by Ross Raisin, And The Land Lay Still by James Robertson, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt and The Gathering by Anne Enright.

As always we're meeting in Mango Landin, from about 7.30pm onwards. New members are always welcome!

Millions of tiny plays about Britain which is actually quite short and we should be able to finish in time

Hi all,
apologies for missing the meeting! so no doodle this time - thanks to Kinga for the update!

I am informed that mostly everyone liked Freedom (I generally enjoyed it, although I'm wondering if Walter's slightly crazy population / mountain top removal ideas get their comeuppance but I haven't got there yet) one member even wrote a review, which is fantastic.

Book for next time is One Million Tiny Plays About Britain and we're meeting on Wednesday the 7th of December in Mango Landin.

The other thing I really wanted to ask was whether or not everyone was up for having some sort of Christmas party - normal tradition is a curry at Khan's followed by some random book swapping (but we don't really have traditions so any feel free to suggest absolutely anything). I'd suggest the 14th?

More or less everything we've read

I was doing a bit of tidying up of our slightly neglected twitter account - which is now @BrixtonBook and it occurred to me to do something a bit more interesting with the background. So I cheated and created a wordle:

Nearly everything we've ever read

Every book we've ever read since 2005 is tagged on this blog - so I think this is a slightly selective wordle. Things Man and Book seem to occur more often. Here's to 2012 and discovering new and exciting things to read..

After all that death some freedom (possibly)

Apologies for the delay in posting - we had a jolly chat about Ian (M) Bank's Transition - with opinions varying from guilty pleasure to teenage sci fi fantasy. It was certainly a page turner.

I cheated, as I don't have that much black ink

The book for next time is Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

Runners up included Brixton Beach, The Hare with the Amber eyes, Half a Yellow Sun, and Guns, Germs and Steel.

Next meeting is on Wednesday the 9th November in Mango Landin