LETSBuzz Book Club 5th December 1999
We'll start with the most important thing- the recipe for Panettone
bread and butter pudding
Serves 4
4 tablespoons raisins
2 ozs butter
2 eggs
5 ozs panettone
½ pint milk
1½ ozs caster sugar
Set the oven to 180°C/350°F ( gas mark 4). Scatter the raisins in a shallow dish, about 9 or 10 inches in diameter. Melt the butter in a shallow pan, and tear the panettone into chunks. They should be about one inch long. Fry the panettone in the butter for a couple of minutes until golden; you will need a reasonably high heat but be careful it doesnn't burn. Tip into the dish with the butter. Mix the eggs and milk and sugar together with a whisk them pour over the panettone. Bake until risen and golden, about 25 minutes. Serve warm.
Adapted from Nigel Slater's Real Fast Puddings (his version uses double cream, a lot more sugar and butter and booze).
We also talked about books.
Andrew said this was a very good read , but he got cheesed off with everyone's motivation being sex. Even the moral character of Ruth behaves in a fairly immoral way. Although it was a great story and recommended reading Andrew did
get bored with it. He has, however, bought a copy for a friend at work
Andrew
Rory had also been reading John Irving, this time The World according to Garp, probably John Irving's most well-known book. The book contains excerpts from Garp's own writing - which is not as good as Irving's prose. Rory thought this rather conceited. The characters are good, although Helen is not a rounded character. Irving is Garp, whose outlook on life is rather warped. He seems to say how shitty life is. If you do anything bad, you will get punished. The book is clever but over contrived. Rory enjoyed it and would recommended it but he will not rush to read another. He agreed with Andrew that the book is driven by a sex. He thought the character of Helen is set up by Irving. She would not to behave in the way that she did and this was a rather contrived way of making everyone to blame for the terrible things that happened in the book. It is certainly worth reading. John Irving is a very clever writer.
Rory
Doreen has also been reading John Irving. She had just finished A Prayer for Owen Meaney. This was third Irving novel she had read and she considered it to be the best so far. The strength of this novel is in the extraordinary story line - which she couldn't describe because Gill wanted to read the book. Doreen thought that the interlocking pieces of the story were marvellously well contrived and found the climax of the story quite stunning. She would heartily recommend it.
Doreen
Andrew was also reading The Ground Beneath her Feet. He was struggling with it. He found he cared about the characters and wanted to know what was going to happen. However, Rushdie goes into too much detail, going back generations with each character and uses such florid language. Rushdie cannot write rock'n'roll. He will finish it, even though it's not keeping him awake on the train in the evenings.
Andrew
This is the biography of a Hungarian mathematician called Paul Erdös. He is a man incapable of dealing with humanity. He escaped from Nazi Germany and then proceeded to fall out with authority whenever he came across it. He worked with everyone who is anyone in mathematics. The book contains a bunch of interesting maths. The book is interesting rather than good. Apparently, all mathematician work out their Erdös number. 1 if you worked with him, 2 if you know someone who did and so on and so
forth.
Gavin
Jean was very pleasantly surprised by this book. She'd read The Shipping News, which was great. She didn't want this book to end. She found the whole idea of the story lovely. An accordion travels all away through the book. There is an Italian maker of the accordion. It is stolen, pawned and given away. The novel story stretches over a long time period to tell the story of several generations of immigrants in America. It is a fascinating window into another culture. She found the savagery upsetting. There are gruesome endings. Quite brutal but just wonderful and highly recommended.
Jean
Pauline had thoroughly enjoyed Oscar and Lucinda by the same author. This story was quite different and is about the life of a human who is very deformed and is set in a vaguely fictitious place in the year 371. There are a great many footnotes which Pauline found aggravating. After about one hundred pages she started to ignore them and then found the book a really good read. The character lives in a travelling circus and the story involves working out identity and deals with disability, politics, and cultures oppressed by other cultures. She thought it was a good book and recommended it
Pauline
Pauline has been to Cameroon and found the author straight with the truth but not at all politically correct. She is very honest and doesn't pull back. There is a map at the front to the book but it doesn't show her route, which Pauline disliked. She also thought that the author suffered from a lack of sense of humour.
Pauline
This isn't a particularly well written book. The structure is poor, episodic and anecdotal. However, they have collected a great bunch of evidence which shows that animals are so much more like us than we like to believe. It is worrying to think how animals are used in experiments. The stories are fascinating. The scientific establishment will want to perpetuate the myth that animals do not feel, but this book tells a different story.
Rory
Like The Wide Sargasso Sea, a fantasy on a character from another novel. This book is about Dickens meeting a convict from Australia, from which developed Great Expectations. Gill was intrigued at how much the character of Dickens was brought into the story. It stands on its own even if you haven't read Dickens novel. It fantasises about unknown parts of Dickens' life, particularly about his sister-in-law.
Gill
Like Jack Maggs, a fantasy on a character from another novel. Jean found this was a novel she read too fast, and had to go back. It is a fantasy on Jane Eyre. Mrs Rochester is the mad lady in the attic and this is her story. She was born in Jamaica, a white European among emancipated blacks. The islands are sensual and beautiful and brutal. Her mother has been brought over from Martinique to marry a drunken husband who has sex with his slaves. Mrs Rochester (Antoinette) has to try and cope, but it's enough to drive anybody mad. She recommended this book
Gill
Meera Syal wrote the screenplay of Bahji on the Beach and the script for the television series Goodness Gracious Me. This book made Gill laugh. It's about growing up in a Punjabi family in a village near Wolverhampton. Anita is an English girl who is "a bad influence".
Gill
The frames have gone all funny - click to make it good.