"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 ...

"The Buddha Of Suburbia" by Hanif Kureishi (4 June 2014)

We will be meeting at The All Nations Hotel.  It's become much more hospitable since the management changed and it's so central.

Last month's book was discussed for a lot longer than I had expected, that said it had a pretty lukewarm  reception by everyone.

Our next book – The Buddha Of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi – is a comedy which both Edward and Mark have read and highly recommended.  It'll be a good change of pace.

"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe (7 May 2014)

We will be meeting at The All Nations Hotel.  It’s still being refurbished and the new management are a lovely change from the surliness of yore.

Margaret Atwood's Surfacing was covered in some detail with many different opinions about the book coming forth.

We also had a surprise appearance of Julia Mason who came over to ask us to take part in the RWPS open day (April 30) and which tuned into a lively debate about the school and the direction it's taking.

The next book was a bit confused but it was decided we’d tackle Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. There was some talk about Graham Greene's The End Of The Affair but that’s gone back into the pile for the moment.

“Surfacing" by Margaret Atwood (2 Apr 2014)

We will be meeting at The All Nations Hotel.  It’s being refurbished and is apparently under new management.

The discussion of last month’s book, Raymond Carver’s “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” was a great success and was enjoyed by all who had read it.  Smaller turnout than usual, perhaps because of the difficulty in finding a copy.

We had an election amongst the attendees for the next book.  The results were (in order):

• “Surfacing” by Margaret Atwood (6)
• “The Sense Of An Ending” by Julian Barnes (3)
• “The End Of The Affair” by Graham Greene (2)
• “The Wasp Factory” by Iain Banks (2)
• “The Drowned World” by JG Ballard (2)
• “Zoe and Franny” by JD Salinger (1)
• “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley (1)
• “Time’s Arrow” by Martin Amis (1)

"Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" by Raymond Carver (5 Mar 2014)

We will be meeting at The Bridge Hotel, Bridge Rd, Richmond.

This is a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver.  There's some additional information about the collection itself here.

The Park Hotel was a real success at the last meeting. I think we'll be meeting there again at some stage.

Summer reading reports (5 Feb 2014)

We will be meeting at The Park Hotel, Nicholson St, Abbotsford.

The plan for this meeting is that everyone will give a one minute presentation about one of the books that they've read over the christmas break.

I would like to think that there might be an extraordinary meeting on January 1 but that seems wildly optimistic when I think about the hangovers that we'll all be nursing.

I thought the Royston Hotel was a good choice with a great selection of beers but it didn't really lend itself to our group's needs where we could sit down talking in a quietish environment.

"Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers (4 Dec 2013)

We will be meeting at The Royston Hotel, Richmond at on December 4, 8:00 pm.

Tom's suggestion of Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers was taken up after the usual tossing around of book titles and ideas.  There were a couple of other suggestions:

• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, 2013 Booker prize winner but too long at 800+ pages

Yellow Birds won The Guardian’s inaugural book award, there’s an article about that here.

This will be the last book group meeting for the year.  Edward was proposing that over the christmas break that we should all read different books and then report back to the group about them when we reconvene next year.