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Many
publishers have reading guides to their books available online which
can be useful for starting a Book Club discussion or simply getting
more out of a book. Below are a small selection of links
that may be of use: Reading Group Guides dot com Bloomsbury Reading Guides Transworld Reading Guides Random House Reading Guides Pan Macmillan Reading Groups Picador Book Club Penguin Readers' Group Faber & Faber's Reading Groups Book Club Girl Blog  Book
Club
Suggestions Tim Parks ‘Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe...’ Teach Us To Sit Still is the visceral, thought-provoking and improbably entertaining story of Tim Parks’ quest to overcome ill health. Bedevilled by a crippling condition which nobody could explain or relieve, he confronts hard truths about the relationship between the mind and the body, the hectic modern world and his life as a writer. Following a fruitless journey through the conventional medical system he finds solace in an improbable prescription of breathing exercises that eventually leads him to take up meditation. This was the very last place Parks expected or wanted to find answers; anything New Age simply wasn’t his scene. Meantime, he is drawn to consider the effects of illness on the work of other writers, the role of religions in shaping our sense of self, and the influence of sport and art in our attitudes to health and well-being. Most of us will fall ill at some point; few will describe that journey with the same verve, insight and radiant intelligence as Tim Parks. Captivating and inspiring, Teach Us To Sit Still is an intensely personal – and brutally honest – story.   No And Me,Delphine De Vigan Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend in class rebel Lucas. At home her father puts a brave face on things but cries in secret in the bathroom, while her mother rarely speaks and hardly ever leaves the house. To escape this desolate world, Lou goes often to Gare d’Austerlitz to see the big emotions in the smiles and tears of arrival and departure. But there she also sees the homeless, meets a girl called No, only a few years older than herself, and decides to make homelessness the topic of her class presentation. Bit by bit, Lou and No become friends until, the project over, No disappears. Heartbroken, Lou asks her parents the unaskable question and her parents say: Yes, No can come to live with them. So Lou goes down into the underworld of Paris’s street people to bring her friend up to the light of a home and family life, she thinks.   The Girls,Lori Lansens 'I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I've never used an aeroplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that...So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand times as me, to be loved so exponentially' In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, 'The Girls' (as they are known in their small town) attempt to lead a normal life, but can't help being extraordinary. Now almost thirty, Rose and Ruby are on the verge of becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins in history, but they are remarkable for a lot more than their unusual sisterly bond. Nicholas Shakespeare Andy Larkham is late. He is due at the funeral of his favourite school teacher, who once told him: ‘It’s hard work being anyone.’ It’s especially hard for Andy – stuck in a dead-end job, terminally short of cash and with a fiancée who is about to ditch him. When the funeral leads to unexpected consequences, Andy has to ask himself: how far will he go to change his life? From early-twentieth-century Turkey to modern day London, Nicholas Shakespeare takes us on an extraordinary journey that explores the temptations of unexpected wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself. the “inheritance” that Nicholas Shakespeare sets out to explore in his latest novel is more than just one of material gain – it asks deeper questions about cultural inheritance and the immigrant experience, and the legacy of damage that parents pass on to their children, in a story that takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through history and across continents ~ Read the full Irish Times review   One Day,David Nicholls `I can imagine you at forty,` she said, a hint of malice in her voice. `I can picture it right now.` He smiled without opening his eyes. `Go on then.` 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, One Day.  The Remains Of The Day,Kazuo Ishiguro In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past . . . A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love. |
If you are unable to find a suitable Book
Club
near you, there are numerous ones online, on TV and on the radio with
vibrant, stimulating
discussions. The New Yorker Book Club is currently reading Jonathan Dee's The Privileges.  Smart, socially gifted, and chronically impatient, Adam
and Cynthia Morey are so perfect for each other that united they become
a kind of fortress against the world. In their hurry to start a new
life, they marry young and have two children before Cynthia reaches the
age of twenty-five. Adam is a rising star in the world of private
equity and becomes his boss's protégé. With a beautiful
home in the upper-class precincts of Manhattan, gorgeous children, and
plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. But
the Moreys' standard is not the same as other people's. The future in
which they have always believed for themselves and their children - a
life of almost boundless privilege, in which any desire can be acted
upon and any ambition made real - is still out there, but it is not
arriving fast enough to suit them. As Cynthia, at home with the kids
day after identical day, begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a
decision that tests how much he is willing to risk to ensure his
family's happiness and to recapture the sense that, for him and his
wife, the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility. The
Privileges is an odyssey of a couple touched by fortune, changed by
time, and guided above all else by their epic love for each other.
The Ireland AM Book Club has chosen Paul Murray's Booker-longlisted novel, Skippy Dies, for their September read.  Ruprecht Van
Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very
difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin
institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of
them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the
Frisbee-playing Siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all
kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time
drug-dealer and official school psychopath.While his teachers battle over modernisation, and Ruprecht attempts to open a portal into a parallel universe, Skippy, in the name of love, is heading for a showdown - in the form of a fatal doughnut-eating race that only one person will survive. This unlikely tragedy will explode Seabrook's century-old complacency and bring all kinds of secrets into the light, until teachers and pupils alike discover that the fragile lines dividing past from present, love from betrayal - and even life from death - have become almost impossible to read...  In
a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis
Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home.
So when a job is offered in America, it is clear that she must go.
Leaving her family and home, Eilis sets off to forge a new life for
herself in Brooklyn. Young, homesick and alone, she gradually buries
the pain of parting beneath the rhythms of a new life - days at the
till in a large department store, night classes in Brooklyn College and
Friday evenings on the dance floor of the parish hall - until she
realizes that she has found a sort of happiness. But when tragic news
summons her back to Ireland, and the constrictions of her old life
unexpectedly give way to new possibilities, she finds herself facing a
terrible choice: between love and happiness in the land where she
belongs and the promises she must keep on the far side of the ocean.Brooklyn is a tender story of great love and loss, and of the heartbreaking choice between personal freedom and duty. In the character of Eilis Lacey Colm Tóibín has created a remarkable heroine. The BBC Radio 4 Book Club is reading The Life Of Pi by Yann Martel.  One boy, one boat, one tiger…
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains
bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck
are a sixteen year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken
leg), a female orang-utan – and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The
scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of
fiction in recent years.The BBC Radio 4
Book At Bedtime is Alex Y
Robert by Wena Poon.
 In 1959, two famous Spanish matadors, who were best
friends, died. Alex y Robert is the witty, modern fable of their
grandchildren: Alejandra, a young American woman determined to become a
matador, and Roberto, a reluctant star Spanish bullfighter whom she
recruits to help her. Part travel adventure, part cultural critique,
the novel portrays man’s complex relationship with animals and a new
generation’s surprising take on an ancient and controversial spectacleThe BBC Radio 4 Book Of The Week is Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock.  Roald Dahl is one of the greatest storytellers of all time.
He pushed children's literature into uncharted territory and almost
twenty years after his death his popularity continues to grow -
worldwide sales of his books have now topped 100 million. The man behind the stories, however, remains an enigma. Dahl was a single-minded adventurer, an eternal child, and his public persona was often controversial. To his readers, Dahl was always a hero and his stories have had an impact on the lives and imaginations of generations of children. Since his death his reputation has been transformed. Critics now too celebrate his wild imagination, quirky humour and linguistic elegance; figures like Willy Wonka, the BFG and the Grand High Witch are immortal literary creations. In this masterly biography, Donald Sturrock reveals many hitherto hidden aspects of Roald Dahl's life: his terrifying experiences as a fighter pilot; the mental anguish caused by the death of his seven-year-old daughter; his work for military intelligence at the end of the war and more. Written with exclusive access to his private papers and manuscripts as well as with reference to hundreds of newly-discovered letters, Dahl lives on every page of this utterly compelling book, which reveals the man as we've never seen before. |
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