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 THE BOOKLOVERS MEETING 9th January 2024
Sue read: The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008/ 2017): Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 has brought Ernaux to the attention of English language readers though this book was only translated in 2017. The citation on the Prize was that it was “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Sue enjoyed the book very much though found at times that, rooted as it was in her life from birth (1940) to 2007 in France there were many references that are probably only accessible to someone living in France at that time. She felt that the most interesting feature of the book is probably its form: no chapters, no headings, but a series of reflections, memories, descriptions of photos and events, philosophical musings, loosely held together by the process of the author’s life as she grows through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. She wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to write both personally and collectively and the book is written mostly in the first person plural ‘we’. Sue felt Ernaux had succeeded in her aim and that her story is a remarkable record of a whole generation, told through the lens of one person’s experiences who becomes a kind of universal ‘everywoman.’
Christine read: Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder at The Old Bailey (1923) by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC and found it a gripping read which both informs, instructs and entertains. The author was appointed a Judge in 2007 and when she moved to the Old Bailey in 2013 she was the only woman among sixteen Judges. Through six case studies she examines the processes involved in trying people for murder – the legalities, the people involved, the shortcomings of our system. As the Judge responsibility for overseeing Diversity and Community she makes clear the worrying state our current system, the erosion of trust, and what needs to be done to improve it. She read English and Law at Cambridge and writes extremely well using humour and erudition. She also writes with great compassion and is only too aware that the criminals she has encountered are very much a reflection of our present society. She also makes it clear that as citizens we have a duty to be invested in the processes of the law and to understand what is involved – many of us will at some point in our lives be called to serve on a jury. We have shaped the current system. The case studies, although these are fictionalised, are based on real events and real people and Her Honour’s skill at telling their stories is most compelling. Christine said she could not put the book down and, at the end, felt better educated.
Denise read: The Premonition (2021) by Michael Lewis. This book tackles the US handling of Covid and the ‘superhero’ scientists who tried to save the day. They (dedicated, resourceful and conscientious people who understood how drastically underprepared America was for a viral pandemic) attempted to get the US government to take their response to it seriously. However, they were up against the fragmented dysfunction of the federal government and the possible indifference of the Trump White house. The author’s approach to the book was to find a small number of unheralded individuals working within vast systems and use them to portray the workings (or non-workings) of those systems. Up against institutional malaise, Lewis’s underlying argument is hardly compatible with the conservative ‘big government doesn’t work’ view which blames centralisation as the root of all societal evil. He portrays a system that is incredibly vast and insufficiently centralised. As well as the Trump administration’s drastic mishandling of the crisis, Lewis is more interested in the political conditions that existed before the pandemic though he diagnoses Trump as a ‘co-morbidity’ (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. A lot of the book is spent establishing his characters’ backstories and he gets to the actual pandemic itself late in the book. His message comes across very powerfully: the US government, in its institutional dysfunction, is in danger of abandoning its citizens to a private sector that is even less equipped to deal with large-scale disasters such as Covid. The book ends on a profoundly depressing note with one of the key players, Charity Dean, a deputy director of California’s Department of Public Health leaving the civil service to found a healthcare startup. Denise found the book impressive both in the story told and the way that is done, but also depressing.
Sue read: The Years by Annie Ernaux (2008/ 2017): Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 has brought Ernaux to the attention of English language readers though this book was only translated in 2017. The citation on the Prize was that it was “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Sue enjoyed the book very much though found at times that, rooted as it was in her life from birth (1940) to 2007 in France there were many references that are probably only accessible to someone living in France at that time. She felt that the most interesting feature of the book is probably its form: no chapters, no headings, but a series of reflections, memories, descriptions of photos and events, philosophical musings, loosely held together by the process of the author’s life as she grows through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. She wanted to demonstrate that it is possible to write both personally and collectively and the book is written mostly in the first person plural ‘we’. Sue felt Ernaux had succeeded in her aim and that her story is a remarkable record of a whole generation, told through the lens of one person’s experiences who becomes a kind of universal ‘everywoman.’
Christine read: Unlawful Killings: Life, Love and Murder at The Old Bailey (1923) by Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC and found it a gripping read which both informs, instructs and entertains. The author was appointed a Judge in 2007 and when she moved to the Old Bailey in 2013 she was the only woman among sixteen Judges. Through six case studies she examines the processes involved in trying people for murder – the legalities, the people involved, the shortcomings of our system. As the Judge responsibility for overseeing Diversity and Community she makes clear the worrying state our current system, the erosion of trust, and what needs to be done to improve it. She read English and Law at Cambridge and writes extremely well using humour and erudition. She also writes with great compassion and is only too aware that the criminals she has encountered are very much a reflection of our present society. She also makes it clear that as citizens we have a duty to be invested in the processes of the law and to understand what is involved – many of us will at some point in our lives be called to serve on a jury. We have shaped the current system. The case studies, although these are fictionalised, are based on real events and real people and Her Honour’s skill at telling their stories is most compelling. Christine said she could not put the book down and, at the end, felt better educated.
Denise read: The Premonition (2021) by Michael Lewis. This book tackles the US handling of Covid and the ‘superhero’ scientists who tried to save the day. They (dedicated, resourceful and conscientious people who understood how drastically underprepared America was for a viral pandemic) attempted to get the US government to take their response to it seriously. However, they were up against the fragmented dysfunction of the federal government and the possible indifference of the Trump White house. The author’s approach to the book was to find a small number of unheralded individuals working within vast systems and use them to portray the workings (or non-workings) of those systems. Up against institutional malaise, Lewis’s underlying argument is hardly compatible with the conservative ‘big government doesn’t work’ view which blames centralisation as the root of all societal evil. He portrays a system that is incredibly vast and insufficiently centralised. As well as the Trump administration’s drastic mishandling of the crisis, Lewis is more interested in the political conditions that existed before the pandemic though he diagnoses Trump as a ‘co-morbidity’ (the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases or medical conditions in a patient. A lot of the book is spent establishing his characters’ backstories and he gets to the actual pandemic itself late in the book. His message comes across very powerfully: the US government, in its institutional dysfunction, is in danger of abandoning its citizens to a private sector that is even less equipped to deal with large-scale disasters such as Covid. The book ends on a profoundly depressing note with one of the key players, Charity Dean, a deputy director of California’s Department of Public Health leaving the civil service to found a healthcare startup. Denise found the book impressive both in the story told and the way that is done, but also depressing.
Read the notes from previous sessions here.