"Regeneration" by Pat Barker (4 Sep, 2019)

We had a nice turnout to discuss last month's book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I'd read the book while I was at school and had really enjoyed it then and I was very pleased to find it just as good reading it again now.  The dystopian world that he describes in the book with a population mesmerised by content-free reality shows and a world dominated by screens is eerily prophetic, as was the description of the fake news showing Montag's death.

That said, we thought that there were really very few characters in the book, and even those were of no great depth.  Perhaps that's a reflection of how the book was assembled from a set of four short stories (as described in the postscript of the version I read), or maybe it's true to the cultivated lack of depth of the society the the characters live in.  The end of the book does seem to come to an abrupt halt.

We had a new member, Chris, join us which is great and he didn't seem too dissuaded by the beer-fuelled political rants that came award the end of the evening.

We also stopped for a few moments to remember my mother who had died recently and many book group members had attended the funeral the day before.  I was very touched by the turnout there and it made me feel the book group is something a bit special.  Thanks.

I think were had the fastest ever adoption of the new book for next month, Pat Barker's Regeneration,  the first (and allegedly the best) of her Regeneration trilogy.

Our next meeting to discuss the book will be on September 4 at the All Nations.

"Fahreheit 451" by Ray Bradbury (7 Aug, 2019)

A good turnout to talk about last month’s book, Spies by Michael Frayn   I just loved it: it got off to a slow start with the central character revisiting the street where he grew up.  Once he’d started telling the story as a boy though, the story became really compelling. Set during WW2, a boy, Stephen, is told by his friend Keith that Keith’s mother is a German spy so they start spying on her.  Unwittingly they reveal that she’s having an affair which they are blind to and don’t realise the complications that they are unleashing on the families.  I couldn’t put it down – it was a great book, and really well written.

We had a bit of a long discussion about which book to do next and there were a lot of great suggestions made.  We settled on Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I remember enjoying the book when I read it at school so it’ll be interesting to revisit it after so long.

There’ll be an extraordinary meeting on July 3 at the All Nations, and then we’ll discuss the book on August 7 at the All Nations.  See you there!

"Spies" by Michael Frayn (5 June, 2019)

Last month's book, When The Night Comes by Favel Parrett, was very well recieved.  It's really something of a paean to the Antarctic research ship, the Nella Dan, skipping in its telling between a young girl, Isla, and one of the crew Bo.  I found the jumps to be a little difficult to follow at time but the vignettes in the book were very engaging.  There were a couple of places where we though that the writer had taken things a bit too far but they didn't detract too much.

Our next book is Spies by Michael Frayn which Mark suggested and – somewhat uncharacteristically – was accepted without much fuss.

See you all at The All Nations on June 5!

"When The Night Comes" by Favel Parrett (1 May, 2019)

There wasn't a lot of love for last month's book, Wildlife by Richard Ford.  People thought that the book relied on clumsy symbolism of the wildfire lurking over the horizon as a metaphor for the problems in boy's parents' relationship.  I agree but I thought the way that the author talked about the boy's feelings as he started to realise that his parents had their own failings and agendas was really evocative for me and reminded me of my own experience growing up.

Our next book is When The Night Comes by Favel Parrett who has been a nominee for the Miles Franklin award (for her book Past The Shallows, not this one).  She's a new Tasmanian writer and that seemed enough to get that book over the line.

See you at the All Nations on May 1!

"Wildlife" by Richard Ford (3 April, 2019)

It was a rather less sodden evening in every sense of the word than the last book club meeting and a small but animated and vocal turnout to talk about Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton.  The play is set in England and details Mr Sloane who moves in to share a house with Kath and her father.  Kath's brother, Ed, appears regularly as the story unfolds and heads towards its sordid ending where Sloane winds up as Kath and Ed's shared plaything in sexual servitude.  It was considered outrageous at the time because of the explicit homosexual content during a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain.

The discussion was lively and jumped around between talking about the motivations of the characters, the language used in the play and the play's reception.  It was a very good choice. I thought.

At one stage one of the club's rules was broken when I (Ben) mentioned a certain jug-eared leader of the (then) opposition.  When we quite amused as we read back over the book club's rules.

Next month we're reading Wildlife by Richard Ford.  I haven't heard of the book or its author so I'm keen to see what it holds.  It's also a film for those who might care to watch that (as well as reading the book of course ...).  See you at The All Nations again on April 3.

"Entertaining Mr Sloane" by Joe Orton (Mar 6, 2019)

It was a sultry night at the All Nations when we met to talk about The Sellout by Paul Beatty.  We shouted over the sound of the rain about what an interesting book it was with a really lovely turn of phrase and quite a thoughtful (and meandering) exploration of race politics in America.  I noted that while there's usually there's a bit of catching up and chit chat at the start of our meetings, people couldn't wait to get started talking about the book.

Next month's book is Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton.  It was written in 1964 and was considered scandalous at the time. I'm interested to see what we make of it 50+ years later.

See you at the All Nations Hotel on March 6!

"The Sellout" by Paul Beatty (Feb 6, 2019)

There was a really good turnout for the last book group meeting of the year and we had a long talk about Gerald Murnane's The Plains.  Everyone agreed that it was a very difficult book to read, we kept wondering when some sort of insight was going to be revealed or a point to the story was going  to be disclosed.  But there wasn't.  I had this inkling that "the plains" and the ruminations upon them described so endlessly in the book weren't a metaphor for peoples' lives, that they just unfold in a featureless way until you look closely at their detail.  When I thought of this it made me wonder if I should start reading it again to make sense of the story in a deeper way.  But I didn't.

We wondered if it would be published today.  There was no mention of the first people who inhabited the plains – the aborigines – but is that just a contemporary preoccupation?  Or is it beside the point? Or women.  There was just the sketchiest mention of the landowner's daughter or the woman in the library whom he had designs on but that seemed to be it.

The preface to the book was wonderful: beautiful lively writing that painted a picture of a work rich with meaning and skill, a picture that seemed so at odds with the book itself.  My feelings about the book were so at odds with its description that I kept doubting I'd really understood it.  The writing was very good but it just seemed that I'd missed something.

We managed to settle on our next book very early in the evening and with very little debate so we're reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty, a Booker prize winner which is a good recommendation (IMHO) right there.  See you at the All Nations on Feb 6 next year!