LETSBuzz Book Club 28th July 2002
A dreadful book. It's all about the downside of having a second child and leaves out all the ups until page 207 (virtually the end). This book mentions the much better Siblings Without Rivalry.
Caroline
A practical book, useful for when siblings row so really for people with older children than mine.
Caroline
Overwritten. A long story for many of the recipes, but very good recipes including one for soup which was judged the best I've ever made and sensible suggestions for dealing with chickpeas. Do not attempt to read the hardback while breastfeeding - it's too heavy.
Caroline
An elegant, beautifully typeset book with woodcut illustrations about self-sufficiency. It's not a How To book, more about principles than practicalities. One to keep and dip into.
Caroline
A superior holiday read. It's pretty well written and, as the character is the same age as me, the childhood descriptions ring bells. But it didn't really stay with me.
Caroline
This is the American equivalent of the above, but better written. This is about a 12 year old girl and her mother who move from New York to the country. The girl's father died some time previously and we learn that he was a manic-depressive and not the charming fellow her mother thought she had married after a whirlwind romance. Lots of twists in the story.
Caroline
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It delves into family history and deals with issues of race. The family are mixed race but the children are white.
Caroline
A couple go off to Kent to run a tearoom and this is a story about their daughter and her friend's childhood and growing up. There is a creepy adult who invites the children to tea, but it is not quite the usual story of child abuse. It's well written.
Caroline
It's about a family in sub-rural USA at the time of the First World War. It deals with the fragile nature of life. A flu epidemic is raging and people are dying. The fear is that the mother of 2 young boys will catch it and the family she holds together will fall apart. Beautifully written. It's like a water colour - very delicate
Andrew
I knew I would enjoy this because of the subject matter-growing up in the 70s (as I did). I also admired it because it didn't just scratch the surface of the subject and reminded me of lots of things I'd forgotten. However, he does set up the humorous situations very clunkily - you really see them coming.
Andrew
This is fairly typical Ann Tyler territory. The main character gives herself an identity crisis. When she was a girl she went to a party and met a man who sees her laughing. She marries him and becomes a party organiser. At the beginning of the book it dawns on her she is not really the sort of person she has become. The rest of the characters are difficult to distinguish and I think that is probably deliberate.
Andrew
This is good for a first novel. It's about a benign patriarch of an Irish family. He retires and neither he nor his wife find it easy. Something happens which throws everything up in the air. All the characters are very well described.
Jean
A children's book from 1992, which won the Carnegie and the Whitbread prizes. It's about a bunch of boys from the lowest grade and a project where they are given sacks of flour the same weight as a baby and they have to look after it as if it were a baby. Very enjoyable
Jean
I read this while on a canal holiday. During the last war women called "trainees" worked on the canals transporting coal. They worked really hard in terrible conditions but the author loved it. After the war she bought a boat and lived on it until her old age. Leighton Buzzard gets a mention as a lady used to offer the trainees her bathroom.
Jean
I really enjoyed this. It's funny and has fantastic characters. It deals with animal
experimentation and genetic engineering. I particularly liked the Jehovah's Witness. Its all brought neatly together at the end.
Gill
I read this Norwegian book because I went to Norway. It's a book about the history of philosophy but set in Norway and I recognised the towns and the houses. Too many philosophers for me to remember but it was a good book.
Gill
This is about alien abduction. However, the abductions are carried out by a shady CIA group initially to convince the Russians that the USA had access to superior technology. A powerful talk show host is "abducted" on the orders of a drunk CIA man and when the poor man goes public no one believes him. It's very funny and knowing and cynical about Washington politics.
Rory
A very good thought-provoking book which sparked lots of conversations between Rory and I while trudging through French rain on holiday. Thoroughly disliked and disapproved of the main character and hated the way he spoke/thought about his wife and children. The author is a great manipulator of his reader and very skilled.
Doreen
A memoir of the author's life working in publishing from after the last War. Written in an old fashioned rather endearing style. Very revealing about some authors. V.S Naipaul was nasty to his wife. Molly Keane was a delightful woman.
Doreen
I had been very impressed by Plainsong, a later book and looked forward to reading this, the author's first novel. A horrible grim read full of pain, self-sacrifice and mutilation with little light relief.
Doreen
Another grim read about the siege of Leningrad during WW2 told by a young woman. I read this tale of winter cold and starvation in the garden on one of the hottest days of the year - a rather odd experience. Well written, affecting and definitely recommended.
Doreen
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.