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An Ice-cream War
William Boyd
Suggested By: Tim
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The First Man
Albert Camus
Suggested By: Tim
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What I Loved
Siri Hustvedt
Suggested By: Tim
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Engleby
Sebastian Faulks
Suggested By: Tim
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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Paul Torday
Suggested By: Tim
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Suite Francaise
Irene Némirovsky
Suggested By: Tim
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Helpless
Barbara Goudy
Suggested By: Kate
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A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess
Suggested By: Phil
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My Once Upon a Time
Diran Adebayo
Suggested By: Fiona
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If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Jon McGregor
Debut novel remembering abnormal events on an otherwise ordinary street.
Suggested By: Louisa
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Accordion Crimes
Annie Proulx
A story of shifting identities in a modern mongrel society. Whilst the first story proved to be a hit with some, by the end we had lost the will to live. We felt that we could talk about the accordion but that we didn't know the accordion.
Suggested By: Mary
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The nineteenth century classic tale of aestheticism, hedonism and hiding your sins in the attic. For many of us this was a reread and most wished that they hadn't bothered. Perhaps it appeals more to the arty teenager than the sophisticated grown-up.
Suggested By: Phil
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Carter Beats the Devil
Glen David Gold
A fictionalised biography of real life magician Charles Carter and his role in the death of President Harding. For some reason expectations were low so we were surprised to discover that this book was magic
Suggested By: Kate
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The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
The story of a twelve year old Afghani boy and his attempts to atone for his past sins. People seemed to enjoy this, but had very little to say about it. Maybe books discussed straight after Christmas always suffer from this.
Suggested By: Becca
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Arthur and George
Julian Barnes
Fictionalised account of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's quest to prove the innocence of unjustly accused George. We loved this book.
Suggested By: Tim
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The Accidental
Ali Smith
Cuckoo in the nest story exposing the cracks beneath a typical middle class family veneer. We mostly enjoyed this book, finding it thought-provoking and evocative.
Suggested By: Paul
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Eleven Minutes
Paulo Coelho
Sexual self-help book by the best-selling author of The Alchemist. Brazilian woman goes to Switzerland to find herself and ends up finding a pimp and her G-spot. The most universally panned book since Miss Garnet's Angel and Girl on a Swing. Someone gave it a zero.
Suggested By: Mary
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This Human Season
Louise Dean
A powerful, blackly funny examination of the lives of ordinary people in late 1970s Northern Ireland, during the dirty protests in the Maze Prison. By and large people enjoyed this book although some found it a little too close to home.
Suggested By: Rebecca
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Daniel Isn't Talking
Marti Leimbach
Partly fictionalised account of a mother's experiences with her autistic child. The author joined us for an interesting discussion ranging beyond the novel to the wider issues it tackles.
Suggested By: Fiona
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Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
This debut novel from Marilynne Robinson is an acclaimed coming of age story set in Idaho mountain lake country. General consensus: too waffly and boring. And wet.
Suggested By: Kate
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Pobby and Dingan
Ben Rice
Two invisible creatures, created by one magically imaginative or emotionally troubled young girl, stir up trouble in a small Australian Outback home. Mercifully short after a few epics, we were charmed by this surreal child-like tale.
Suggested By: Louisa
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Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
A saga of brotherly and sisterly love, crocuses and Obscure Objects, this book really captured the group's imagination. Although it attained the most universal praise since The Poisonwood Bible, there was still enough difference of opinion to provide an interesting and, at times, heated discussion.
Suggested By: Fiona
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The Historian
Anna Kostova
A historian-turned-diplomat tells his daughter the creepy story of his obsession with finding Vlad the Impaler's tomb. Kostova starts promisingly, but by page 100 of the 642 pages, has descended into Da Vinci Code territory. This might have been bearable had it not been for the continental drift like pace of the storytelling.
Suggested By: Phil
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The Spell
Alan Hollinghurst
A middle-aged civil servant's life is transformed when his new, young lover introduces him to London's gay scene. Hollinghurst tries to explore love, lust and loss amongst middle class Englishmen, but ends up with a clunky gay Mills & Boon. Sadly not on a par with his 2004 Booker winner.
Suggested By: Tim
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Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer
An American Jew arrives in the Ukraine to track down the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Safran Foer twists language and narrative and ends up with a kind of cross between The Curious Incident and The Reader. Genuinely clever or a dog's breakfast? There were strong arguments on both sides.
Suggested By: Dawn
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Elizabeth Costello
J.M. Coetzee
Book based around eight lectures delivered by an aging, fictional Australian novelist. After making her life's work the study of other people, Costello now becomes an object of scrutiny. The consensus was that it was more enjoyable to discuss than to read (especially as we discussed it whilst locked inside Blackwell's after dark).
Suggested By: Mary
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Incendiary
Chris Cleve
A grieving East End woman writes to Osama Bin Laden after losing her family in a terrorist attack on a football stadium. Presciently released on 7th July 2005, this was an intelligent and powerful book that encapsulated its time. Light relief provided by a dog swiping some sausages during our discussion.
Suggested By: Paul
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Great Apes
Will Self
When artist Simon Dykes wakes after a late night of routine debauchery, he discovers that his girlfriend has turned into a chimpanzee along with the rest of humanity. Perhaps we've been there too, because we all found Self's Swift-esque satire funny and clever. 'Euch Euch'.
Suggested By: Rebecca
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Geek Love
Katherine Dunn
Perhaps we're a little sick and twisted, but we lapped up Dunn's cult tale of a family of freak-show exhibits. A bald, albino dwarf narrates events that follow her mother's drug, pesticide and radioactive-isotope gobbling during pregnancy to keep carnival turnstiles clicking.
Suggested By: Fiona
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253
Geoff Ryman
This book -- which originally gained fame as a website -- devotes a page to each of the 253 people travelling on a doomed tube train travelling from Embankment to the Elephant and Castle. Ryman describes each passenger's history, appearance and thoughts in exactly 253 words.
Suggested By: Kate
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The Girl In A Swing
Richard Adams
An English porcelain dealer finds what appears to be a perfect wife on a trip to Copenhagen but is unaware of her dark past. The Watership Down author moves from animal tales to supernatural thrillers, and fails spectacularly -- thanks to pretentiousness, bad sex scenes and Scottish accents even Mel Gibson would blanch at.
Suggested By: Paul
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Small Island
Andrea Levy
Gilbert Joseph is one of several thousand Jamaican RAF pilots who fought for the mother country during WW2. Upon returning to civilian life in England finds himself treated very differently. This book may have won the Orange and Whitbread prizes and countless press plaudits, but it drew a very mixed response from us.
Suggested By: Rebecca
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The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A nameless woman is driven mad by enforced confinement after the birth of her child. Written in 1892, and at just 28 pages, this was the oldest and shortest book we'd tackled as a group. Whilst not univerally adored, it proved great to discuss - for example, how much were judgements clouded by knowing that it was based on the author's own experience?
Suggested By: Dawn
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Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
How will humanity adapt to a warming planet, powerful multinationals, society schisms and science staying one small leap ahead of morality? Atwood's a little pessimistic in this thought provoking but enjoyable book about unchecked progress.
Suggested By: Tim
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The Knowledge of Angels
Jill Paton Walsh
A philosophical novel that traces the effects of two outsiders -- one a castaway and atheist, the other a child suckled by wolves -- on a Mediterranean island community ruled by the church. Interesting, but unlike the servant girl in this tale, it didn't make us mew like gulls.
Suggested By: Louisa
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Finding Myself
Toby Litt
Chick-lit novelist gathers material for her new novel by her inviting friends to a secretly wired-up house by the sea for a month. Non-characters, irritiating narrator and lack of plot meant that a great Virginia-Woolf-meets-Big-Brother concept was wasted -- and that the Author's surname risks becoming reading group rhyming slang.
Suggested By: Antony
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Tales of The City
Armistead Maupin
Originally a newspaper column, this San Franciso-based set of short stories spawned five sequels, a TV mini series and a huge cult following. Despite a 'bah humbug' or two, we mostly enjoyed Maupin's book in the same way that we would enjoy a daft American soap opera. We also found that 30 years on, the book still retains shock value -- especially in a post-AIDS world.
Suggested By: Mary
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The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
Louis De Bernieres
If donkeys giving birth to kittens and graphic torture are your thing then you might appreciate this more than we did. The author of Captain Corelli mixes tragedy, satire, farce and fantasy together in his panoramic tale of an escalating conflict between a corrupt Latin American government and a band of guerillas.
Suggested By: Clare
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Starter For Ten
David Nicholls
Does nostalgia make a great book? Magdalen College provided an apt backdrop to discuss David Nichols' campus-set romcom. Ideal beach fodder, the book was enthused by those of the group who were transported back to their university days and less so by those who weren't.
Suggested By: Rebecca
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum
Kate Atkinson
A slightly muted thumbs up was awarded to Kate Atkinson’s debut novel, chosen to redress the fact that only a third of the authors on our reading list have been female. The chirpy and omnipresent Ruby Lennox narrates her own story and weaves in sepia-tinged accounts of women in her family over the generations. Worrying trend of picking books that feature animal deaths continued by its pet shop fire set piece.
Suggested By: Kate
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Timoleon Vieta Come Home
Dan Rhodes
Call us a sentimental old reading group, but we liked Dan Rhodes Littlest Hobo-esque novel with a punch-to-the-gut-ending. It tells of a faded composer and socialite who lives in self-imposed exile in the Italian countryside with his ever-loyal mongrel. One or two of us queried the author's opinion of his audience though.
Suggested By: Fiona
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The Treatment
Mo Hayder
Airport fiction or best-of-genre? Dark, psychological thriller set in South London concerning a couple left chained to radiators to die of thirst and starvation, whilst their young son is taken off to an even worse fate. The verdict? Reasonably spooky page turner without any further pretentions - itching to be made into a two-hour ITV screenplay!
Suggested By: Kuldeep
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Alma Cogan
Gordon Burn
Alma Cogan was Britain's biggest-selling vocalist of the 1950s. Burns' novel blends fact and fiction as he explores the relationship between public and private life. Our meeting at Trinity College seemed to reach agreement that this was a complex, mysterious and fascinating book. That said, it still left several of us a little bit cold (Gordon and Tom excepted), and wondering whether a re-read was required.
Suggested By: Tom
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The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night Time
Mark Haddon
Our unwritten 'no hardbacks' Reading Group rule was broken with this sleeper hit by local author Mark Haddon. Narrated by an autistic child who discovers his neighbour's dog dead, the book concerns his quest to find out whodunnit which leads him to the heart of a startling lie within his own family. The book was generally loved in varying quantities of affection by the group - though none of us could live with the narrator.
Suggested By: Paul
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The Accidental Tourist
Anne Tyler
This tale of an anally-retentive travel writer turned out to be a surprising hit. Extra points went to Gordon and Fiona who did their homework by managing to track down the mid 80s romantic comedy based on the book.
Suggested By: Phil
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Running Wild
J.G. Ballard
Ballard's middle-class baiting reaction to the Hungerford Massacre. Like Motherless Brooklyn, this novella was another one of those books we hoped would be much better - especially as it was set just down the road from us!
Suggested By: Gordon
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The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen
Franzen's story of a mother's determination to get her splintered family together for one last Christmas was simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking. Another one for our top ten.
Suggested By: Kate
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The Reader
Bernard Schlinck
Oprah Book Club favourite addressing German war guilt. The morality maze that surrounds this issue made this not an easy book to read or discuss. Respected rather than enjoyed.
Suggested By: Michael
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Mr. Alfred MA
George Friel
After a series of American novels, Friel's gritty short story came as a refreshing change. It follows a Glasgow teacher's descent into a breakdown after he gets rather too close to one of his pupils.
Suggested By: Fiona
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A Scanner Darkly
Philip K. Dick
Despite apprehension about from some members regarding science fiction, the response to this schizophrenic drug novel was fairly good. The debate was further memorable for the bonkers spaniel owned by Fiona's housemate.
Suggested By: Gordon
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Time Will Darken It
William Maxwell
Set in the American Midwest at the turn of the century, this book begins with what seems like a favourite Reading Group theme - the family get together (see also All Families Are Psychotic and The Corrections). The debate over this melancholy novel centred on who we sympathised with most - Austin or Martha.
Suggested By: Kate
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The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
A reading group favourite. Kingsolver’s atmospheric tale of a preacher’s family on a mission in the Belgian Congo seemed to grip everybody, though questions were raised (over top-notch guacamole) about her rewriting of history.
Suggested By: Kate
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Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem
Darn. Lethem’s detective novel seen through the eyes of a sufferer of Tourette’s Syndrome sounded so much better on paper. Still, Michael and Kuldeep did an honourable job of sticking up for it.
Suggested By: Kate
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All Families Are Psychotic
Douglas Coupland
In a cosy corner of the Trout Inn, we concluded that Coupland's post-millennial, dysfunctional family caper was enjoyable but hardly earth shattering. Debate over the merits of ‘zeitgeisty’ fiction dominated this book.
Suggested By: Paul
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Miss Garnett’s Angel
Salley Vickers
A boisterous book group saw Salley Vicker’s novel left with multiple stab wounds. Sadly, this old-spinster-finds-happiness-in-Venice package was almost unanimously unloved.
Suggested By: Camilla
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A Prayer For Owen Meany
John Irving
John Irving’s rambling but enjoyable novel about a boy who discovers the date of his death was discussed over mulled wine in a vegan café.
Suggested By: Kuldeep
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Ghostwritten
David Mitchell
David Mitchell’s debut novel weaved together a number of tales that included Japanese warlords, art theft in St. Petersberg and ghosts in a Nick Hornby-esque London. We all seemed to agree it was a great book; what we couldn't agree on was which section was our favourite!
Suggested By: Dawn
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His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman
Attempts were made to get local author Phillip Pullman along. Luckily perhaps; reception was rather muted to the first in his metaphysical fantasy trilogy.
Suggested By: Shelley
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The Secret History
Donna Tarrt
Donna Tartt’s cult novel featuring a murderous group of Ancient Greek students seemed to divide the group down the middle. We either loved it to bits or couldn’t quite see what distinguished it from a standard thriller.
Suggested By: Phil
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Atonement
Ian McKewan
McKewan’s tale of a child's lie that leads to disasterous repurcussions at the time of the Second World War was an ideal start to our Reading Group.
Suggested By: Michael
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