Hey guys,
After a very successful March meeting (thanks to Seamus's excellent hosting skills and copious quantities of food!) it's that time of the month again - voting time!!!!
So far we've had three nominations for the April meeting of the bookclub:
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is a young adult novel written by Suzanne Collins. It was first published on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, in hardcover.[1] It is written in the voice of sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where the countries of North America once existed. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, holds absolute power over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games are an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12 to 18 from each of the 12 districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle in which only one person can survive.
Prague Cemetery
The protagonist of The Prague Cemetery is a professional forger, a malcontent who fakes documents for a living, and in this rambling, ramshackle picaresque novel, the bilious Captain Simone Simoni slithers across Europe in the pay of one secret service after another, claiming personal responsibility for the calumnies that provoked most of the political crises of the 19th century. He serves his apprenticeship during Italy's campaign to liberate itself from Austrian rule. Officially he joins the novelist Alexandre Dumas in embellishing the mystique of Garibaldi; secretly he demolishes the patriotic myth, exposing the fabled warrior as a short, bandy-legged mediocrity. Abandoning Sicily for Paris, he stirs up trouble during the Commune, and goes on to concoct the incriminating document that causes Dreyfus to be convicted of treason. Side excursions link him with the Turkish conman Osman Bey and with the Romanovs in their efforts to suppress the bomb-throwing nihilists. Simonini's customers and victims are all actual historical characters, which enables Eco to suggest that history is a tissue of fictions, not a tale told by an idiot but a text slickly pieced together by self-appointed authorities who should never be trusted.
The Mahon Report
The Tribunal of Inquiry Into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, commonly known as the Mahon Tribunal, was a public inquiry in Ireland established by Dáil Éireann in 1997 to investigate allegations of corrupt payments to politicians regarding political decisions. It mostly investigated planning permissions and land rezoning issues in the 1990s in the Dublin County Council area. Judge Alan Mahon was the final chair of the tribunal and its other members were Judge Mary Faherty and Judge Gerald Keys. The original Chairman, who was the sole member until just before his retirement, was Judge Feargus Flood, giving rise to the original common name of the Flood Tribunal. Using investigations to collect evidence and public hearings with witnesses, it investigated allegations made in the media prior to its establishment and allegations subsequently made to the tribunal itself. The tribunal ran from November 1997 to March 2012 and was the longest running and most expensive public inquiry held in Ireland, with costs forecast to reach between €250 million and €300 million. Public hearings concluded in September 2008, and following several delays due to legal challenges, the tribunal began preparing its final report. It published four interim reports, and the final report was published on 22 March 2012.
So nowcomes the fun bit - voting time!!!
Sunday 25 March 2012
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Round 2 - The Book Choice
Well the votes are in!
It was close, but the people have spoken, and the choice for the second book club meeting is.....
.....The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell.
I don't think I'm giving much away by including the following synopsis from Wikipedia to let you all know what's in store and whet your appetite:
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the fifth novel published by the author David Mitchell. It is a historical novel set during the Dutch trading concession with Japan in the late 18th century. It begins in the summer of 1799 at the Dutch East Indies Company trading post Dejima in the harbor of Nagasaki and tells the story of a Dutch trader's love for a Japanese midwife who is however spirited away into a sinister mountain temple cult.
So get reading people!
P.S.
For those of you who are interested in how the voting went it was actually quite close. The scores were as follows:
Score Book Choice
26 Thousand Autumns
23 Sex and Marriage
22 Towards a Second Republic
19 Middlesex
15 Two Caravans
There was a maximum score available of 35 with a minimum score of 7.
P.s. If your book wasn't selected for this meeting don't be afraid to enter it as an option for a later meeting.
It was close, but the people have spoken, and the choice for the second book club meeting is.....
.....The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell.
I don't think I'm giving much away by including the following synopsis from Wikipedia to let you all know what's in store and whet your appetite:
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the fifth novel published by the author David Mitchell. It is a historical novel set during the Dutch trading concession with Japan in the late 18th century. It begins in the summer of 1799 at the Dutch East Indies Company trading post Dejima in the harbor of Nagasaki and tells the story of a Dutch trader's love for a Japanese midwife who is however spirited away into a sinister mountain temple cult.
So get reading people!
P.S.
For those of you who are interested in how the voting went it was actually quite close. The scores were as follows:
Score Book Choice
26 Thousand Autumns
23 Sex and Marriage
22 Towards a Second Republic
19 Middlesex
15 Two Caravans
There was a maximum score available of 35 with a minimum score of 7.
P.s. If your book wasn't selected for this meeting don't be afraid to enter it as an option for a later meeting.
Friday 27 January 2012
Decision time!
Now is the time to vote for your choice of book for the next book club meeting!
In the interest of democracy, and to encourage future suggestions, we've set up a little preferendum type system to choose the book.
Please vote using the following form:
Remember, if your book isn't selected for the next meeting please feel free to nominate it for a future meeting!
Voting will close next Tuesday, so please get your votes in ASAP!
In the interest of democracy, and to encourage future suggestions, we've set up a little preferendum type system to choose the book.
Please vote using the following form:
Remember, if your book isn't selected for the next meeting please feel free to nominate it for a future meeting!
Voting will close next Tuesday, so please get your votes in ASAP!
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Next meeting of the book club, and a call for suggestions
After the success of our first meeting we have decided to proceed with our little venture!
The date of the next meeting has been set as 4th March, and Adrianne has kindly volunteered to host our little gathering.
Therefore, dear readers, the time has come to select a new book for us all to enjoy!
Please make your suggestions by the end of the week, and we can then put democracy into action and choose ourselves a new challenge!
Feel free to comment on this post with your suggestion and I'll collate them all and set up a poll.
The date of the next meeting has been set as 4th March, and Adrianne has kindly volunteered to host our little gathering.
Therefore, dear readers, the time has come to select a new book for us all to enjoy!
Please make your suggestions by the end of the week, and we can then put democracy into action and choose ourselves a new challenge!
Feel free to comment on this post with your suggestion and I'll collate them all and set up a poll.
The first meeting!
Well I think it's fair to say the first meeting of the book club was a great success!
Admittedly perhaps we didn't all quite gain the insight into the novel that we originally intended, due perhaps to logistics and timing issues. A lesson for future book club events to to try and stick to books that are recently in print or else out of copyright and available on the internet, as there were difficulties in sourcing the book in time for the meeting.
While our opinion on the book maybe have been succinctly summed up by describing the books as "self-indulgent wank", we still managed to have a stimulating discussion and all gained a lot from the experience.....especially around our waistlines!
Much credit is due to Sharon who obviously prepared to feed the five thousand! We were treated to a delicious banquet, with supplementary courses courtesy of Rory to appease the carnivores amongst us! Between the feast and the free-flowing wine everybody indulged themselves.
So back to the book:
For those of us who didn't manage to read the book wikipedia provided a neat little summary, and so they were able to join in our discussions.
Although the title suggested that the book was made up of ten and a half chapters, it could more accurately be described as ten short stories, with a brief discussion on the nature of love and the difficulty writing about love poses for the prose author compared to the poet inserted after the eighth story.
We agreed that the structure of the book was its chief downfall. To some of the readers it appeared as though, inspired by Joyce, Barnes sought to prove to the reader that he too could experiment with style and technique over the course of the novel. However unlike Ulysses the lack of a protagonist, and only incidental allusions to recurrent themes, such as the ark or woodworm, meant the reader had very little to tie the different stories together.
In fact as the stories got darker as the book progressed, moving from whimsical takes on the Flood at the start from the perspective of a woodworm stowaway to eventually covering themes such as descents into madness and nuclear fallout some readers found it difficult to motivate themselves to continue reading without having a central protagonist to keep their attention drawn. It became a case of reading for the sake of reading rather than for the enjoyment of the experience. And this, dear readers, is not what our book club is about.
The verdict - we give 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters' four out of ten.
Admittedly perhaps we didn't all quite gain the insight into the novel that we originally intended, due perhaps to logistics and timing issues. A lesson for future book club events to to try and stick to books that are recently in print or else out of copyright and available on the internet, as there were difficulties in sourcing the book in time for the meeting.
While our opinion on the book maybe have been succinctly summed up by describing the books as "self-indulgent wank", we still managed to have a stimulating discussion and all gained a lot from the experience.....especially around our waistlines!
Much credit is due to Sharon who obviously prepared to feed the five thousand! We were treated to a delicious banquet, with supplementary courses courtesy of Rory to appease the carnivores amongst us! Between the feast and the free-flowing wine everybody indulged themselves.
So back to the book:
For those of us who didn't manage to read the book wikipedia provided a neat little summary, and so they were able to join in our discussions.
Although the title suggested that the book was made up of ten and a half chapters, it could more accurately be described as ten short stories, with a brief discussion on the nature of love and the difficulty writing about love poses for the prose author compared to the poet inserted after the eighth story.
We agreed that the structure of the book was its chief downfall. To some of the readers it appeared as though, inspired by Joyce, Barnes sought to prove to the reader that he too could experiment with style and technique over the course of the novel. However unlike Ulysses the lack of a protagonist, and only incidental allusions to recurrent themes, such as the ark or woodworm, meant the reader had very little to tie the different stories together.
In fact as the stories got darker as the book progressed, moving from whimsical takes on the Flood at the start from the perspective of a woodworm stowaway to eventually covering themes such as descents into madness and nuclear fallout some readers found it difficult to motivate themselves to continue reading without having a central protagonist to keep their attention drawn. It became a case of reading for the sake of reading rather than for the enjoyment of the experience. And this, dear readers, is not what our book club is about.
The verdict - we give 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters' four out of ten.
Thursday 5 January 2012
Setting it up!
It was unusually cold on that fateful January morning, and Sharon was finding it difficult to motivate herself. Faced with a blank computer screen, and weeks of sober, cold poverty, she found herself dreaming of something to occupy those empty winter nights, fill her calendar, and expand her mind....
....and so she began the Green Scene Book Club.
For those of you just joining us welcome to the blog where we record our book club's musings on popular literature!
I'm Tom, and I was lucky enough to be on the 'To:' list of Sharon's email:
"Afternoon all
"What a wonderful idea! I'm always looking for a reason to read an interesting book (rather than the man-lit or fantasy stuff I usually read) and this is the perfect excuse.
Also if people were given the opportunity to suggest the books from which we all choose one to read, it will give us a chance to try out different genres and authors over the next few months. It would be a great way to expand our horizons!
Unfortunately I'm travelling a lot over the next few months, and so there's a chance I wouldn't be available on Thursdays/Friday, so would it be possible to suggest that it becomes a Sunday evening supper club/book club?
A possible way to organise would be:
A few other people signed up, and Bob was our proverbial Uncle!
We had two suggestions for the first month:
Sharon has kindly volunteered to host the first gathering with a dinner at 7.30 pm on Sunday, 22nd January.
For those of you who wish to participate vicariously, feel free to read the book and post your thoughts as comments on the blog entry. I'll be posting a summary of our deliberation after the dinner!
Happy reading!
....and so she began the Green Scene Book Club.
For those of you just joining us welcome to the blog where we record our book club's musings on popular literature!
I'm Tom, and I was lucky enough to be on the 'To:' list of Sharon's email:
"Afternoon all
To cheer up the next few weeks of sober, cold poverty I am proposing to start a book club. Rules are simple, we vote on a book, attempt/pretend to read it and then take turns at hosting a dinner in which we smugly and intellectually discuss the themes of the book, whether we have read it or not.
If you are interested email with your first book suggestion, and feel free to invite anyone else you think might like to join. I am aiming for Thurs19th/Fri 20th for the first dinner.
Shar
xo"
Of course, having always wanted to be in a book club I jumped at the opportunity and replied, with my own suggestions:
Also if people were given the opportunity to suggest the books from which we all choose one to read, it will give us a chance to try out different genres and authors over the next few months. It would be a great way to expand our horizons!
Unfortunately I'm travelling a lot over the next few months, and so there's a chance I wouldn't be available on Thursdays/Friday, so would it be possible to suggest that it becomes a Sunday evening supper club/book club?
A possible way to organise would be:
- Book suggestions the first week of the month
- Vote and choose by the Friday of that month
- Two weeks to read the book (in case people have busy schedules, or wish to share copies of the book)
- Dinner on the Sunday of the third week
- A week off to think of our suggestions for the next month
A few other people signed up, and Bob was our proverbial Uncle!
We had two suggestions for the first month:
- A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters - Julian Barnes
- If on a Winter's Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
Sharon has kindly volunteered to host the first gathering with a dinner at 7.30 pm on Sunday, 22nd January.
For those of you who wish to participate vicariously, feel free to read the book and post your thoughts as comments on the blog entry. I'll be posting a summary of our deliberation after the dinner!
Happy reading!
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