LETSBuzz Book Club 18th April 2004
Very well described, very believable. Enjoyable though sad. The sentences are very comfortable, they read well.
Christine
Wonderful. I loved this book. It's written for children but adults can read it too (long digression for discussion of "crossover fiction")
Christine
A feminist writing at the end of the 19th century. The title story is set in a country where there are only women. Three men arrive who are astonished that the women can manage.
Christine
I ordered this after being reminded of the author by the broadcast of one of Alistair Cook's letters from America. It's a memoir of a man whose parents were immigrants living in East side New York. He becomes friends with famous writers and trains at Bletchley during WWII. He's written lots of stuff and is best known for I Can get it for you Wholesale.
Christine
Many of these philosophical essays draw on the author's own experience. They are direct and straightforward, an easy read. It's a modern philosophy primer. Most of the things he deals with I've already dealt with myself and I agree with him. However, I wonder if I'd feel the same if I'd grown up on a council estate and a brother hooked on heroin.
Andrew
He's a really good storyteller. He hits the ground running. The narrator is a writer musing on his bereavement. He starts researching the life of a silent moviemaker. There is something slightly surreal but believable at the bottom of it. It's tremendously readable but the story has not stayed with me.
Andrew
Bob highly recommended this and I wasn't disappointed. It's a bit of a romp through the English countryside. You start off looking through the eyes of a rural policeman, and then it spirals off through several levels of local villains. The chaos in the plot seems to grow when the author introduces other bits of the story from 150 years before. The same characters exist in parallel times. The first 40% of the story is very funny. It was too long but still pretty readable. I liked the way it drew on English folk culture in a respectful way.
Andrew
Very disappointing. Difficult to distinguish between the author and the narrator.
Jane
Fresh,different unusual. About finding interest in ordinary people as some artists do (Lucien Freud). A small scale tragedy. The twins stuff is contrived.
Jane
I enjoyed the slow accretion of information.
Bob
I abandoned this. Utterly boring and old fashioned. It reads like a 1950's novel although it's set in the 80's
Bob
Another pair of knickers on the front cover. The book itself is an awkward size to hold. It's just like his last book Atomised. The narrator is cynical and depressed but strangely attractive to women. He organises sex holidays in the Far East for this is where you have to go for women. Western women are no good at sex because of feminism. It also attacks Islam.
Bob
This is about men and women, the differences between them, why they fall in and out of love. It's a bit of a diatribe against women in divorce and how the state looks after them. There's no balancing view. It's disappointing and very predictable.
Bob
A book about Chief Executive Officers; why they're so over rated and overpaid and what we should do about them.
Bob
Well written. Fairly inconsequential. The main character is obsessive. He lives alone. He can only cross the road at a dropped kerb. He creates magic squares. Mildly amusing.
Bob
His first 4 or 5 novels were fantastic. I read this for old times' sake. Not very good but much better than some of his recent stuff. It's not saying anything new. There are 3 separate stories.
Bob
A travel book about Paraguay. The author is obsessed by the country which he first visited during the Falklands War. It's quite well written but it hasn't sold the country to me. It was once thought to be the location of El Dorado but it's a nasty place where Nazis go to die and Nazi hunters track them down. It's been run by a succession of awful dictators and the main economic activities are drug running and smuggling. The book is worth a read.
Gill
I loved this book. It's about how you view life, how much you choose to believe and about the nature of belief. Wonderful
Gill
She's a good writer. It's a gritty subject. Her mother begins to suffer with memory loss. Another dimension (that of Jewish immigrant insecurities) is also explored. Her mother is very concerned about appearances and tries to cover up her memory loss because she is worried about losing face. This is a subject not much written about.
Gill
This is a first novel with the usual first novel flaws. There are 2 stories; one about a modern American woman, the other about a French family set in the time when the Huguenots were being persecuted. I lost patience with the historical stuff. The modern story is more interesting and is spot on about life in small town France.
Caroline
Apparently, you can sort out your problems by acing out the characters in the stories from the Mabinogion(!).
Caroline
A true story. The author has broken up with her man. She decides to row up the Thames with her daughter and a friend. A lovely read but not as comic as Three Men in a Boat.
Caroline
I keep this is in the bathroom so I get the chance to read something every day. They are little philosophical essays about living with less but living well.
Caroline
It's the first of his I've read and I'm really enjoying it. We get to page 200 before he introduces a major character. The story is about an American woman who goes to Italy where she meets another American. At first the reader is taken in by him but you begin to realise there's something unpleasant about him.
Caroline
Poetry in English and Spanish with photos. I don't read Spanish but I enjoyed the English versions.
Caroline
Recent Forgeries and
These come with a CD of the author reading the poems. He used the money he made from Lord of the Rings (he played Aragorn) to set up own publishing company. Reading these I thought I can do this. You get what they're on about.
Caroline
Very good, a return to form. Some wonderful creations like the pigoons ( which I at first read as pigeons)and the names of the various synthetic foodstuff. A return to form.
Doreen
The author also wrote The Sandman graphic novels. A scary children's book. Well written . Put the wind up this 46-year-old reader but no doubt today's 11 year olds are made of sterner stuff.
Doreen
Non-fiction. Essays on the various theories, cults and the like which have influenced society In the West. Good stuff on monetarism, the dot com and Enron collapses and the barmy stuff the Blairs have got involved in. Well worth a read.
Doreen
Her last novel and a good one. Potentially lazy and irritating (a novel about a woman writing a novel) but she disarms criticism by discussing the point. There are knee jerk feminist reactions which she then examines. A serious and absorbing story
Doreen
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.