"The Yacoubian Building" by Alaa Al Aswany (6 August 2014)

مرحبا!  This month's book is an Egyptian classic, The Yacoubian Building (or عمارة يعقوبيان‎) by Alaa Al Aswany, picked after an extensive and circuitous discussion at the end of the last meeting.

The discussion of last month’s book, The Buddha Of Suburbia, was very lively and kicked off with a an epoch-appropriate question about if given the choice, we’d rather listen to Never Mind The Bollocks by The Sex Pistols or Give ‘Em Enough Rope by The Clash.  Everyone (but me) seemed to think that The Clash still had more to offer; I think the Pistols (somehow) managed to produce an incredible piece of work.

The consensus was that we really enjoyed the book, it had a terrific combination of humour, thoughtfulness and bit of sexy that was involving and an interesting read.

In August, we will be meeting at The All Nations Hotel again.  The new staff there have made a huge difference to the feel of the place.

As is our tradition during the school holidays, there will be an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday, 2 July at The All Nations.  Note that the rules stipulate that the next book may not be discussed but that anything else is fair game.  In some ways I'm not sure how this differs from a normal meeting ...