March 2013

The Reading Group meets every third Wednesday afternoon of each month, in a member's home, for an hour and a half of literary and general discussion, over tea and biscuits. We were one of the very first groups to set up when the Totton U3A was formed and our membership of ten readers has always been fully subscribed. We have read and discussed over seventy books, which are supplied from Hants County Council Library Service and are on loan for about six weeks at a small annual fee. We read mostly fiction, from a list provided by the Library, and try to make sure that a wide range of genres are selected to cater for all tastes. However the liveliest discussions are always about books that were generally disliked. Popular and current fiction always has a very long waiting list to borrow which means that the months choice may already be familiar or have been read by some of the Group, but hopefully this doesn't happen too often. This months reading is a debut novel by Kirstan Hawkins called " Dona Nicanora's Hat Shop" about a small town deep in the jungles of South America and the hopes and dreams of the quirky characters that live there. Ann

The April Club Report

The April Club Report

Last month’s choice was Amenable Women by Mavis Cheek.
Flora Chapman is in her fifties when her husband dies in a bizarre ballooning accident. Seizing upon her new found freedom, she decides to finish the history of their village that Edward had begun. A reference to Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife who he rejected for being ugly, captures her imagination as she begins to delve deeper into the life of this neglected figure. Meanwhile, in the Louvre, Holbein's portrait of Anne of Cleves senses the tug of a connection and she begins to tell the story of the injustices she suffered and just how she survived her marriage...
The group found the story compelling, well and succinctly written and deeply moving.
The writer’s highly original ploy of the portraits of all these famous Queens conversing with each other in a gallery was particularly admired.

March Report

Last month’s choice was “Private Peaceful “by Michael Morpugo.
Thomas Peaceful is a young volunteer private in the First World War.
He is waiting overnight in his army tent remembering his early family life with his beloved elder brother, his thoughts on the terrible things he has seen and the relentless circumstances leading to these memories.

The group found the story compelling, well and succinctly written and deeply moving.

June “Case Histories”, a detective thriller by Kate Atkinson

This month’s book is a detective mystery showing three disparate stories that are eventually connected. While its characters are superficially calm and straightforward, great mysteries rage within. The result is part complex family drama and part mystery. It was rated highly by the group as compelling with both a surprising and cliff-hanging finale.

Next month’s book is “The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society” by Chris Stewart.

The Reading Group meet on the third Wednesday of every month.


Elaine

May - This month’s book “Two Caravans”

This month’s book “Two Caravans” was about the experiences and exploitation of illegal and legal immigrants in the agricultural industry. It had a mixed reception from the group, but the general consensus was the narrative was somewhat disjointed and the subject matter both dark and sad.

Next month’s book is “Case Histories”, a detective thriller by Kate Atkinson.

March Book of the month

This month’s book was “Toast”, a biographical account of his boyhood to the age of twenty, by Nigel Slater a well-known chef. It particularly charted his life in the sixties, following his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage.

It received mixed reports from the group, especially the rather graphic sexual descriptions which were deemed unnecessarily explicit in a book of this genre.

Next month we will be reading “Empress Orchid” by Anchee Min, which is fictional account of the life of the last Empress of China.

Elaine

October's meeting

This month's selection, "I Captured the Castle" by Dodie Smith, was generally rated as entertaining and successful at presenting the "twenties" era in which it was set.
The Group agreed that the author, writing in the first person as a 17 year old girl, showed how a young girl thought and behaved. Her description of her disfunctional family was both amusing and tragic if slightly unbelievable.

Elaine