Last Evening on Earth by Roberto Bolano

Next meeting 29th April 6.30 - come along for a glass or two of wine and a hearty discussion about the book.

Ernest Hemingway once said that a good story was like an iceberg; what is visible is always smaller than the part that remains hidden beneath the water, which confers intensity, mystery, power and meaning on what floats on the surface. This is certainly true of the fourteen stories here, the first collection by the universally acclaimed Chilean author to be published in English.

They are characters living in the margins, on the edge, in constant flight from nightmarish threats.
And the story 'Mauricio ("The Eye") Silva' opens with the following sentence: 'Mauricio Silva, also known as The Eye, always tried to avoid violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but violence, real violence, is unavoidable, at least for those of us who were born in Latin America during the fifties and were about twenty years old at the time of Salvador Allende's death.'

March Book: Half the Yellow Sun

Our next book will Half the Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This book, first published early 2007, is set in Nigeria in the 1960's and brilliantly tells the story of the three main characters: a young boy employed as a house servant, Oleana a middle-class Nigerian woman and an author.

As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Set at a difficult time, many of us will remember the Biafra War, this is a gripping, beautifully written, easily accessible book.

What to read as your next book, when you have just finished a brilliant read?

One of our best selling books is Half the Yellow Sun, a wonderful story set in 1960 Nigeria as the civil war begins. If you enjoy this book we have lots of other suggestions for brilliant reads based in Africa such as: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe or Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok (written while she lived in Herne Hill) or Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi Wa Htiong'o or The Last King of Scotland. So many to choose from...if you would like more ideas, see our Universe of Books in the bookshop.

Or how about American Politics, there are some great novels particularly from James Ellroy: American Talboid, The Cold Six Thousand and The Black Dahlia or from Don DeLillo: Libra, Fluke by James Herbert or Being There by Jerzy Kosinski.
More ideas of other books to read can be found on our wrapping paper: Universe of Books.

Previous Reading Group books & 7-word summaries!

Okay, these are the books read by our Book Group over the last 18 months - do feel free to disagree with me!

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This Book Will Save Your Life - I loved this, but was in minority...

The Sirens of Titan - Magnificient space revenge! But not popular choice.

The Kite Runner - Essential Afghan drama; emotional, rewarding and marvellous.

What Was Lost - Great mystery, beautifully told; vivid and surprising.

Memory Keeper's Daughter - heartbreaking, gripping; dreadful family secrets and aftermath.

Winter in Madrid - Spanish civil war epic, evocative and exciting.

Seeing - a brilliant 'What If?' sequel to 'Blindness'.

Measuring the World - Two scientists in 18th century competing obsessively

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Engaging family drama, great characters, must read!

The Gathering - Irish family misery; a fictional 'Angela's Ashes'.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Lovely, heart-warming. Don't see the film.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Dreadful. Empty. Pointless. No more words required.

Midnight's Children - Sprawling epic, infuriating, and - yes - too long.

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So! Do you agree? Most of the time the group had differing opinions, apart from Miss Pettigrew, which we all liked, and Reluctant Fundamentalist, which no-one did..

Holes by Louis Sachar

The next meeting is Wednesday October 29th at 6.00pm and we are reading this:

Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so he isn't too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a boys' juvenile detention centre. At Camp Green Lake the boys must dig a hole a day, five feet deep, five feet across, in the dried up lake bed. The Warden claims the labour is character building, but it is a lie. Stanley must dig up the truth.

First published in the US in 1998 "holes" has garnered praise time and time again.
"Written with a crystalline prose and simplicity it is startlingly original. There is not one false sentence." Independent on Sunday

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-fighting toumament, to prove that he has the makings of a man. His loyal friend Hassan promises to help him? for he always helps Amir? but this is 1970s Afghanistan and Hassan is merely a low-caste servant who is jeered at in the street, although Amir still feels jealous of his natural courage and the place he holds in his father's heart. But neither of the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the tournament, which was to shatter their lives.

After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return, to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.
To be discuss on Wednesday 7th November @ 6.30pm in the bookshop, all welcome.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Families have secrets they hide even from themselves... It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr David Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will haunt five lives for ever.For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of betrayal whose consequences only time will reveal, he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly entrusting her care to a nurse. As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a little girl must make her own way in the world as best she can.
To be discussed on Wednesday 3rd October, at 6.30pm.