book club

I love the idea of a book club. I love reading and books and words and I love a chance for a good discussion about any of the above.  So a friend, who is as equally enamoured with books, and I thought, ‘Let’s do it’.  So finally – a book club! I am very excited! And even more exciting is the book list we are using – the amazing Popular Penguin’s.  So many good books to choose from!  My current ‘must read’ list of Popular Penguins is as follows (it gets longer by the day!)

The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Satre
And the Ass Saw the Angel,  Nick Cave
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
Everything is Illuminated, Johnathon Safran Foer
For the Term of His Natural Life, Marcus Clarke
The Getting of Wisdom, Henry Handel Richardson,
Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
One Day in the Life of Ivan, Aleksandr Denisovich Solzhenitsyn
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Regeneration, Pat Barker
A Room of Ones Own, Virginia Woolf
The Shadow of the Sun, Ryszard Kapuscinskui

I have also just finished reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.  I am glad I read it, mostly because it has a reputation of being a bit of a classic.  Honestly, it was a tad boring in parts and a little tedious. But in other moments you could visiualise and almost smell the red azalea’s growing outside the morning room that du Maurier describes (for example!).  I can see why it has such a cult following, du Maurier must have been an impressive lady and certainly must have pushed the literary boundaries of her time.  I don’t think I will be reading any more of her books but I am glad to finally be able to tick Rebecca of my list.  

Now it’s on to The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinskui.  I’m not waiting for the book club for this one!