Reading List for the next Few Months

At the last book group meeting we compiled a list of books that we would like to read over the coming months. Here is a brief summary of each of them:

	The Abortionist's Daughter-by Elisabeth Hyde - ‘The problem was Megan had just taken the second half of her ecstasy when her father called with the news’ Nineteen-year-old university student Megan Thompson is beautiful, cool, clever and sexy – the kind of girl boys fall in love with. She’s mostly steered clear of family life since the death of her younger brother. That is until the day she hears her mother, Diana, has been found floating face down in their swimming pool. Diana, as Director of the Center for Reproductive Choice, was a national figure who inspired passions and made enemies. Detective Huck Berlin is brought in to investigate the case when it becomes clear that Diana was murdered. Several people have quarrelled with Diana on that fateful day, not least Frank, her husband of twenty years, and her wayward child. Now father and daughter are thrown together in an unexpected twist of family life.
	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells -- taken without her knowledge -- became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . . Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.
	Generation A - by Douglas Coupland - In the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the world, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.
	Trespass by Rose Tremain - Set among the hills and gorges of southern France, Trespass is a thrilling novel about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge, by the bestselling author of The Road Home, winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
	The Long Song - by Andrea Levy - Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize, THE LONG SONG is breathtaking, hauntingly beautiful, heartbreaking and unputdownable You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.
	The History of Love - by Nicole Krauss - Leo Gursky is a man who fell in love at the age of ten and has been in love ever since. These days he is just about surviving life in America, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbour know he's still alive, drawing attention to himself at the milk counter of Starbucks. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago in the Polish village where he was born Leo fell in love with a young girl called Alma and wrote a book in honour of his love. These days he assumes that the book, and his dreams, are irretrievably lost, until one day they return to him in the form of a brown envelope. Meanwhile, a young girl, hoping to find a cure for her mother's loneliness, stumbles across a book that changed her mother's life and she goes in search of the author. Soon these and other worlds collide in The History of Love, a captivating story of the power of love, of loneliness and of survival.

Book for August - The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

We chose The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry as our bookclub book for August. We all read Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry's earlier autobiography over a year ago and enjpyed it, but felt that we would find his latest one more interesting as it covers his university days and television days rather than his school boy days.

Overview - Thirteen years ago, Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry’s autobiography of his early years, was published to rave reviews and was a huge bestseller. In those thirteen years since, Stephen Fry has moved into a completely new stratosphere, both as a public figure, and a private man. Now he is not just a multi-award-winning comedian and actor, but also an author, director and presenter. In January 2010, he was awarded the Special Recognition Award at the National Television Awards. Much loved by the public and his peers, Stephen Fry is one of the most influential cultural forces in the country. This dazzling memoir promises to be a courageously frank, honest and poignant read. It will detail some of the most turbulent and least well known years of his life with writing that will excite you, make you laugh uproariously, move you, inform you and, above all, surprise you.

Book Club Book for November 2010

Our book club book for November 2010 is chosen by Lesley and is called The Help - by by Kathryn Stockett.

Book Description:
Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver... There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell... 

The next book club is at Jackie's on Thursday 25th November, 7.30pm for an 8pm start!

Book Club - 20th August 2010

In tonight's book club we discussed Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. There wasn't a lot of discussion since it has been almost two months since some of us read this due to the last book club being cancelled.

In summary, some of us were bored by the book, some of us found it to be light hearted reading and some of us enjoyed it. In its time (the 1950s)  it was a fairly scandalous book as it involved  illicit sex, secret lives, public drunkenness, abortion, incest and murder


We've made a list of books for the book club for the coming months. Here they are:

NOVEMBER -  The Help by Kathryn Stockett (chosen by Lesley)
DECEMBER - A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks (chosen by Ailsa)
JANUARY - Room – by Emma Donahue (suggested by Michelle) 

FUTURE MONTHS:

Ellis Island – by Kate Kerrigan (suggested by Suzanne)
The Abortionist's Daughter  - Elisabeth Hyde (suggested by Louise)
Ravens -  by George Dawes Green (suggested by Jackie)

The History of Love – by Nicole Krauss (suggested by Louise)

Welcome to our Edinburgh Book Club Blog

Hello and welcome to our book club blog!

Here you'll find the ramblings about the books we have read, a few book club questions, a list of books that we plan on reading over the next few months and the arrnagements for the next book club.

There are six of us in the book club - me (Suzanne Thomson), Lesley Trail, Jackie Ness, Louise Small, Michelle Brogan and Ailsa Bruce. We also have an honorary member - Kirsteen Bruce who lives in Montreal but joins us in our little Edinburgh book Club each time she comes over to visit her home town of Edinburgh.