Booklovers
We started Booklovers because we wanted to talk about the books we’ve been reading and to introduce those we’ve enjoyed to others.
We each take turn to speak about our chosen book and this invariably leads to discussion of broader topics. Four times a year we agree on a shared title to maintain the value of close reading and to hear each other’s interpretations of different aspects of those works.
We are a friendly group of people, meeting on the third Thursday of each month in a member’s home. You’ll find you’re never short of ideas for a new book to read and we warmly welcome others to join us.
For further details, please contact Christine Roberts.
For upcoming meetings, please visit our events page.
We each take turn to speak about our chosen book and this invariably leads to discussion of broader topics. Four times a year we agree on a shared title to maintain the value of close reading and to hear each other’s interpretations of different aspects of those works.
We are a friendly group of people, meeting on the third Thursday of each month in a member’s home. You’ll find you’re never short of ideas for a new book to read and we warmly welcome others to join us.
For further details, please contact Christine Roberts.
For upcoming meetings, please visit our events page.
Notes from Booklovers (via Zoom) April 2020
Present: Sue, Christine, Denise, Alan, Vanessa, Simon, Di,
Sue read: Heartburn (1983) by American writer, Nora Ephron. Ephron is best known as a screenwriter having written scripts for several well-known films such as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Her last film was Julie & Julia . Nephron also wrote journalism.
The novel is a fictionalised account of her marriage to and divorce from Carl Bernstein. Sue described the novel as light but funny and perceptive. It is very much writing as therapy since the main aspect of the plot is the story of her husband’s infidelity while Ephron was pregnant with their second child which drove her to put her feelings down on paper. Sue liked the fact that the author refuses to be a victim and doesn’t go skulking around but claims the territory. In writing this novel she ‘reclaimed’ herself.
Simon read: Ohm’s Law (2007) by Dr Alana Jellinek, an Australian author, practising artist and academic specializing in art theory and currently teaching at the University of Hertfordshire. The book is set in the near future where the world is governed by ‘meta-corporations. It addresses issues such as globalization, ‘big pharma’ as well as complicity and 'bad faith'. Ohm's Law tackles the growing convergence of the State and the Market in a highly readable, almost humorous, utterly unfashionable novel. In this world everything is trademarked, the key organization being called BLACCXN. The main character who works in London is bitten by spider and brought back to health by an Ohm (a slave) who is subsequently arrested for corporate treason as she has been using plants (outside the trademarked pharmaceuticals).
The book is set in the near future and Simon felt that we are just at the beginning of the journey which the world described in the novel is foretelling. He found it a thought-provoking and enjoyable novel.
Mary read: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth (2004) by Philippa Gregory. Mary had not read any of Philippa Gregory’s books before, but would thoroughly recommend these two novels in one book. Gregory is an English historical novelist who won the Parker Romantic Novel award for The Other Boleyn Girl that she has yet to read.
Earthly Joys covers the time of James 1st and Charles the 1st reign in the early to middle 1600s. All Gregory’s characters were real people, the main one being John Tradescant the gardener for Robert Cecil, King James’ advisor. John Tradescant was an intrepid traveller and wherever he went he collected specimens of plants that he brought back to England. It is said that he is responsible for the horse chestnuts in England as well as many other species from all over the world that he took back to The Ark, at Lambeth, the family home that housed ‘the rarities’ and was the first museum in London. Elizabeth died of the plague at the Ark. Mary feels that if you are a gardener, you will love this book as it is excellent and informative read.
She also read the sequel, Virgin Earth, which tells of the adventures of John Tradescant junior and his travels to America at the time of the Civil War Once again, there was much about gardening. He was responsible for bringing the tulip tree to England. Mary said they had planted one in their garden about 20 years ago, and the flowers are beautiful. A compelling read!
Vanessa read An Acre of Barren Ground; Or, the History of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Brick Lane (2005)by Jeremy Gavron
This is the fascinating account, a novel come-social history, which excavates one single London street, the East End's Brick Lane. The author calls it a novel and much of it necessarily admits to being fiction – but according to Vanessa it’s very well researched and that does not get in the way of the fiction. According to the writer Julie Myerson who published an account of the people who lived in her own house in Clapham Gavron has ‘an imagination that has let rip. It is full of detail and covers a very broad range of history from immigrant Jews a century or more ago, through to more recent Bangladeshis, Huguenots, soldiers, medieval and includes as well as straight history, details of characters such as Jack the Ripper alongside a tortured dancing bear. It also, about halfway through the book, includes a cluster of pages of graphic novel. You accept and swallow them unerringly - they make a perfect and neat sort of sense in the context of that part of the story (grasping young square-chinned City guy with mobile phone in search of funding for his dotcom business considers the financial sense of making his base the Old Brewery on Truman Street where his Jewish tailor grandparents lived from hand to mouth). ‘
Vanessa really enjoyed this lively account of the history of one of London’s most famous streets.
She also read No I Want To Join a Book Club (2008) by Virginia Ironside, a funny and poignant story about life beyond middle age.
Alan read: A World Apart by Daphne Rae (1982) which is an account of her own life and her marriage to John Rae who was best known in his role as Headmaster of Westminster School. Alan had a personal interest in the book since he had taught with John Rae at Harrow. He was pleased to find the book in a second hand book shop and was fascinated to read it due to his having known John Rae. The book was very controversial when it was published and caused considerable embarrassment to Daphne’s husband. It is not short on details about homosexuality at Harrow and she has a very modern take on such matters given that this was written during the Thatcher years. It’s an unconventional account and would shock these days, for example, she records that there were ‘very few Jews’ at Harrow. It is also an account of her own upbringing. She was abandoned by her parents and almost left to fend for herself though wound up living with her aunt and uncle who were here legal guardians. The latter was a cruel, inhuman man. Apparently she is still alive and lives in India.
Alan found it a fascinating account of a world he has known, the public school, and felt it gives a good flavour of this.
Di read: The Reformed Soul (2006) by John Stubbs
This is a biography of arguably England’s greatest secular and religious poet who lived in turbulent times. The book vividly shows him to be a complex and contradictory character who was in turns student, lawyer, sex god, husband, writer and preacher.
An extremely clever young man and always one for seeking out the main chance, he joined Elizabeth1’s then favourite the Earl of Essex on a self-publicising raid on Cadiz. The experience of seeing the massacres on both sides stayed with him forever. A glittering career came to a sudden halt when he fell in love ( at aged 30) with a 15 year old Ann More and married her in secret. Cut off from society by her pompous father, he spent the next few years in darkest Mitcham writing and trying to retrieve his career. Eventually and after much networking in the murky world of James 1’s court, Donne joined the church and thanks to the King’s favourite, the Earl of Buckingham, he became the preacher at St Pauls. He didn’t do much for the dilapidated cathedral but his sermons were a must hear for the great and good of London. He was a great advocate of religious tolerance, believing that all men whatever their station were inter connected with each other with a shared purpose in life. His great words in his sonnet ‘No Man Is An Island’ still seem true today:
No man is an island entire of itself, every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ----
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
He died eventually at an old age for the time-ie 58.
Di said ‘the author has great fun with his charismatic subject and the book is full of entertaining history about the politics and religious turmoil at the time. With the exception of Ann and John’s close friends, none of the protagonists come out well, emerging as corrupt, greedy and downright criminal in an unforgiving society where your status relied on a cobweb of networks.
(Plus ca change). Donne’s frequent changes of mind, religious convictions and fortunes are vividly described and this is an excellent biography without being unnecessarily scholarly.
Christine read: The Man Who Planted Trees (1953), a short story by Jean Giono. She has to confess here that the story is fictional although she was taken in by the fact that the man who encounters the man in the title has the same autobiography as Giono, i.e. he fights in two wars although is essentially a pacifist and was given to doing long walks in the mountains of his home region, Provence. The Man Who Planted Trees (French title: L'homme qui plantait des arbres) is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. An allegorical tale, it tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was written in French, but first published in English.
The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness. He runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings. He finds only a dried-up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd Elzéard Bouffier who takes him to a spring he knows of. He spends the night in the shepherd’s hut where he is intrigued by the fact that the shepherd is selecting acorns from a large pile and polishing them. The traveller spends the whole of the next day with the shepherd who shows the traveller that he is engaged on a major reforestation project. He watches him making holes in the ground with his straight iron staff and drops into them acorns that collected from miles away. The traveller goes off to fight in the first world war but returns, shell-shocked, on a subsequent occasion and spends time with Bouffier which restores his state of mind and body by now the acorns etc have grown into young saplings. By the end of the story, the valley is vibrant with life and is peacefully settled, with more than 10,000 people living there, not knowing they owe their happiness to Bouffier.
Christine found the story captivating and way ahead of its time with its preoccupation with ecological issues. It is a brief but inspiring read which leaves you with faith in humankind. It has been turned into a film and was narrated on BBC Radio 4 by Bill Paterson.
Sue read: Heartburn (1983) by American writer, Nora Ephron. Ephron is best known as a screenwriter having written scripts for several well-known films such as Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle. Her last film was Julie & Julia . Nephron also wrote journalism.
The novel is a fictionalised account of her marriage to and divorce from Carl Bernstein. Sue described the novel as light but funny and perceptive. It is very much writing as therapy since the main aspect of the plot is the story of her husband’s infidelity while Ephron was pregnant with their second child which drove her to put her feelings down on paper. Sue liked the fact that the author refuses to be a victim and doesn’t go skulking around but claims the territory. In writing this novel she ‘reclaimed’ herself.
Simon read: Ohm’s Law (2007) by Dr Alana Jellinek, an Australian author, practising artist and academic specializing in art theory and currently teaching at the University of Hertfordshire. The book is set in the near future where the world is governed by ‘meta-corporations. It addresses issues such as globalization, ‘big pharma’ as well as complicity and 'bad faith'. Ohm's Law tackles the growing convergence of the State and the Market in a highly readable, almost humorous, utterly unfashionable novel. In this world everything is trademarked, the key organization being called BLACCXN. The main character who works in London is bitten by spider and brought back to health by an Ohm (a slave) who is subsequently arrested for corporate treason as she has been using plants (outside the trademarked pharmaceuticals).
The book is set in the near future and Simon felt that we are just at the beginning of the journey which the world described in the novel is foretelling. He found it a thought-provoking and enjoyable novel.
Mary read: Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth (2004) by Philippa Gregory. Mary had not read any of Philippa Gregory’s books before, but would thoroughly recommend these two novels in one book. Gregory is an English historical novelist who won the Parker Romantic Novel award for The Other Boleyn Girl that she has yet to read.
Earthly Joys covers the time of James 1st and Charles the 1st reign in the early to middle 1600s. All Gregory’s characters were real people, the main one being John Tradescant the gardener for Robert Cecil, King James’ advisor. John Tradescant was an intrepid traveller and wherever he went he collected specimens of plants that he brought back to England. It is said that he is responsible for the horse chestnuts in England as well as many other species from all over the world that he took back to The Ark, at Lambeth, the family home that housed ‘the rarities’ and was the first museum in London. Elizabeth died of the plague at the Ark. Mary feels that if you are a gardener, you will love this book as it is excellent and informative read.
She also read the sequel, Virgin Earth, which tells of the adventures of John Tradescant junior and his travels to America at the time of the Civil War Once again, there was much about gardening. He was responsible for bringing the tulip tree to England. Mary said they had planted one in their garden about 20 years ago, and the flowers are beautiful. A compelling read!
Vanessa read An Acre of Barren Ground; Or, the History of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Brick Lane (2005)by Jeremy Gavron
This is the fascinating account, a novel come-social history, which excavates one single London street, the East End's Brick Lane. The author calls it a novel and much of it necessarily admits to being fiction – but according to Vanessa it’s very well researched and that does not get in the way of the fiction. According to the writer Julie Myerson who published an account of the people who lived in her own house in Clapham Gavron has ‘an imagination that has let rip. It is full of detail and covers a very broad range of history from immigrant Jews a century or more ago, through to more recent Bangladeshis, Huguenots, soldiers, medieval and includes as well as straight history, details of characters such as Jack the Ripper alongside a tortured dancing bear. It also, about halfway through the book, includes a cluster of pages of graphic novel. You accept and swallow them unerringly - they make a perfect and neat sort of sense in the context of that part of the story (grasping young square-chinned City guy with mobile phone in search of funding for his dotcom business considers the financial sense of making his base the Old Brewery on Truman Street where his Jewish tailor grandparents lived from hand to mouth). ‘
Vanessa really enjoyed this lively account of the history of one of London’s most famous streets.
She also read No I Want To Join a Book Club (2008) by Virginia Ironside, a funny and poignant story about life beyond middle age.
Alan read: A World Apart by Daphne Rae (1982) which is an account of her own life and her marriage to John Rae who was best known in his role as Headmaster of Westminster School. Alan had a personal interest in the book since he had taught with John Rae at Harrow. He was pleased to find the book in a second hand book shop and was fascinated to read it due to his having known John Rae. The book was very controversial when it was published and caused considerable embarrassment to Daphne’s husband. It is not short on details about homosexuality at Harrow and she has a very modern take on such matters given that this was written during the Thatcher years. It’s an unconventional account and would shock these days, for example, she records that there were ‘very few Jews’ at Harrow. It is also an account of her own upbringing. She was abandoned by her parents and almost left to fend for herself though wound up living with her aunt and uncle who were here legal guardians. The latter was a cruel, inhuman man. Apparently she is still alive and lives in India.
Alan found it a fascinating account of a world he has known, the public school, and felt it gives a good flavour of this.
Di read: The Reformed Soul (2006) by John Stubbs
This is a biography of arguably England’s greatest secular and religious poet who lived in turbulent times. The book vividly shows him to be a complex and contradictory character who was in turns student, lawyer, sex god, husband, writer and preacher.
An extremely clever young man and always one for seeking out the main chance, he joined Elizabeth1’s then favourite the Earl of Essex on a self-publicising raid on Cadiz. The experience of seeing the massacres on both sides stayed with him forever. A glittering career came to a sudden halt when he fell in love ( at aged 30) with a 15 year old Ann More and married her in secret. Cut off from society by her pompous father, he spent the next few years in darkest Mitcham writing and trying to retrieve his career. Eventually and after much networking in the murky world of James 1’s court, Donne joined the church and thanks to the King’s favourite, the Earl of Buckingham, he became the preacher at St Pauls. He didn’t do much for the dilapidated cathedral but his sermons were a must hear for the great and good of London. He was a great advocate of religious tolerance, believing that all men whatever their station were inter connected with each other with a shared purpose in life. His great words in his sonnet ‘No Man Is An Island’ still seem true today:
No man is an island entire of itself, every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ----
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
He died eventually at an old age for the time-ie 58.
Di said ‘the author has great fun with his charismatic subject and the book is full of entertaining history about the politics and religious turmoil at the time. With the exception of Ann and John’s close friends, none of the protagonists come out well, emerging as corrupt, greedy and downright criminal in an unforgiving society where your status relied on a cobweb of networks.
(Plus ca change). Donne’s frequent changes of mind, religious convictions and fortunes are vividly described and this is an excellent biography without being unnecessarily scholarly.
Christine read: The Man Who Planted Trees (1953), a short story by Jean Giono. She has to confess here that the story is fictional although she was taken in by the fact that the man who encounters the man in the title has the same autobiography as Giono, i.e. he fights in two wars although is essentially a pacifist and was given to doing long walks in the mountains of his home region, Provence. The Man Who Planted Trees (French title: L'homme qui plantait des arbres) is a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. An allegorical tale, it tells the story of one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. It was written in French, but first published in English.
The story begins in the year 1913, when a young man who is the narrator was travelling alone on a hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps, enjoying the relatively unspoiled wilderness. He runs out of water in a treeless, desolate valley where only wild lavender grows and there is no trace of civilization except old, empty crumbling buildings. He finds only a dried-up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd Elzéard Bouffier who takes him to a spring he knows of. He spends the night in the shepherd’s hut where he is intrigued by the fact that the shepherd is selecting acorns from a large pile and polishing them. The traveller spends the whole of the next day with the shepherd who shows the traveller that he is engaged on a major reforestation project. He watches him making holes in the ground with his straight iron staff and drops into them acorns that collected from miles away. The traveller goes off to fight in the first world war but returns, shell-shocked, on a subsequent occasion and spends time with Bouffier which restores his state of mind and body by now the acorns etc have grown into young saplings. By the end of the story, the valley is vibrant with life and is peacefully settled, with more than 10,000 people living there, not knowing they owe their happiness to Bouffier.
Christine found the story captivating and way ahead of its time with its preoccupation with ecological issues. It is a brief but inspiring read which leaves you with faith in humankind. It has been turned into a film and was narrated on BBC Radio 4 by Bill Paterson.
Read the notes from previous sessions here.
