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
21st November 2023
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Sue P read: Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Westover grew up in a Mormon family in an isolated area of America. it is set in the 1980 and tells the story of the author’s struggle through education to turn her back on the family and its ideologies. For example her father believed that the government was out to get them, and that the world would end soon; her mother, a midwife eventually becomes a herbal healer with her own cures for every disease. They didn’t believe in hospitals or schools. All health issues were treated with the mother’s own cures. One brother sadistically abuses her. Schooling was restricted to a handful of books. Tara eventually realises that “my life was narrated for me by others Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute” and, having seen another of her brothers escaping the family, she decides to go to college. She goes to Trinity College, Cambridge in the UK and then experiences the clash between the different worlds of home and college and of the two belief systems. She is initially in a state of culture shock but she works hard to join her new world and re-invents herself on her own terms. However, even in college she never completely escapes her home and its beliefs. She turns her back on the physical and mental abuse meted out to her and as she narrates her life stories, she conveys how those events have shaped her and how she has changed, revealing the transformative power of education. Sue felt the book was very well-written and readable.
Sue M read: Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Garmus. This book has had an enormous success since it was published and has now become a television series. Set in America in the 1950/60s, Garmus, herself American but now living in London, had a career as a copy writer. This is her first novel. The protagonist is Elizabeth Zott. She’s a scientist, a chemist, who is subjected to sexual discrimination and work and is then sacked for being pregnant. One of her male colleagues steals her work and publishes it as his own. This actually happened to Garmus and was one of the stimuli to write the novel). Elizabeth is subsequently offered a job hosting a TV cookery show and takes the job because she needs the money having been left with a baby and no job. She uses the show as a forum for encouraging women to react against the stereotypical male/female roles of that time, and to follow their dreams. She aims to introduce the audience and the reader to the basics of chemistry as it affects cookery. The book is also a story about love (her partner is her total soulmate), grief (he dies tragically young), feminism (she gets her revenge for the sexism she has experienced), friendship, parenting – and the resilience of the human spirit. It also features a wonderful dog called 6.30 with an extensive vocabulary. Sue found it to be heart-warming, uplifting and very funny.
Christine read: Tyll (2017) by Daniel Kehlmann. Kehlmann is a renowned contemporary German author whose books are bestsellers. This one was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The central character, Tyll Uelenspiegel is based on the jester character from medieval German folklore. It is an historical novel set during the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 – 1648. Tyll is a historical witness to the war and with each chapter almost acting as a short story or novella, we see him in various circumstances and with various social groups which included famous people such as Elizabeth Stuart daughter of King James 1 &6th who is by marriage the Queen of Bohemia. He finds himself in a range of challenging circumstances which he always manages to flee from carrying on with his role as an entertainer – a tight rope walker and conjuror. The war is a grim reminder of present times and hunger is forever present even for those characters born in comfortable circumstances. It’s a linguistically fascinating book, profound one minute, witty the next and with many historical insights. There is evidence of much meticulous research and has been described as ‘more than a novel because it has chosen wit and reason as well as art and knowledge as its allies.’ Christine thoroughly enjoyed it and was left wanting to read more by this author.
Di read: Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam. This is the first book in a trilogy which has had great popularity. It tells the tale of ‘Old Filth’ aka Sir Edward Feathers, a retired judge and widower, using time slips to cover the period from his birth through his experience as a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'Home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England, to the extremities of his old age. FILTH is an acronym for ‘Failed in London Try Hong Kong’. The story reveals the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood but also encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond. As a young man he was attractive and dynamic but as we meet him, he finds it hard to navigate the world at the back end of his life and can come across as an annoying character. Many reviewers considered this book to be a literary masterpiece. e.g. The Guardian reviewer wrote “This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style.” Di found this to be a fascinating and moving character study and extremely well written.
Denise read: Going Infinite (2023) by Michael Lewis. Lewis was there when it happened, i.e. the cryptocurrency Bitcoin frenzy led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Before he’d turned thirty, he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire who at one point considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Bankman-Fried never liked rules and was allowed to live by his own. Lewis describes him as "an easily distractible, game-obsessed, brilliant, slovenly, cargo-shorts-clad eccentric whose most singular talent was his skill at calculating probabilities in a condition of constantly changing rules." Lewis followed him through the wild financial roller-coaster ride which finally fell apart leaving a tale of hubris and downfall. Reviewers suggest that Lewis is overly sympathetic towards his subject, something he refutes. Lewis said he believes that Bankman-Fried never lied to him, or at least "that he'd only lied by omission, not commission." It appears he started the book writing about an unsung hero, but by the end that hero becomes a villain. Di is fascinated by these intensely clever people who can create such gigantic fortunes and then lose them. She considers that Lewis is very good at second guessing what people are going to do, and very much enjoyed the book.
21st November 2023
Present: Christine, Denise, Di, Sue
Sue P read: Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. Westover grew up in a Mormon family in an isolated area of America. it is set in the 1980 and tells the story of the author’s struggle through education to turn her back on the family and its ideologies. For example her father believed that the government was out to get them, and that the world would end soon; her mother, a midwife eventually becomes a herbal healer with her own cures for every disease. They didn’t believe in hospitals or schools. All health issues were treated with the mother’s own cures. One brother sadistically abuses her. Schooling was restricted to a handful of books. Tara eventually realises that “my life was narrated for me by others Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute” and, having seen another of her brothers escaping the family, she decides to go to college. She goes to Trinity College, Cambridge in the UK and then experiences the clash between the different worlds of home and college and of the two belief systems. She is initially in a state of culture shock but she works hard to join her new world and re-invents herself on her own terms. However, even in college she never completely escapes her home and its beliefs. She turns her back on the physical and mental abuse meted out to her and as she narrates her life stories, she conveys how those events have shaped her and how she has changed, revealing the transformative power of education. Sue felt the book was very well-written and readable.
Sue M read: Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Garmus. This book has had an enormous success since it was published and has now become a television series. Set in America in the 1950/60s, Garmus, herself American but now living in London, had a career as a copy writer. This is her first novel. The protagonist is Elizabeth Zott. She’s a scientist, a chemist, who is subjected to sexual discrimination and work and is then sacked for being pregnant. One of her male colleagues steals her work and publishes it as his own. This actually happened to Garmus and was one of the stimuli to write the novel). Elizabeth is subsequently offered a job hosting a TV cookery show and takes the job because she needs the money having been left with a baby and no job. She uses the show as a forum for encouraging women to react against the stereotypical male/female roles of that time, and to follow their dreams. She aims to introduce the audience and the reader to the basics of chemistry as it affects cookery. The book is also a story about love (her partner is her total soulmate), grief (he dies tragically young), feminism (she gets her revenge for the sexism she has experienced), friendship, parenting – and the resilience of the human spirit. It also features a wonderful dog called 6.30 with an extensive vocabulary. Sue found it to be heart-warming, uplifting and very funny.
Christine read: Tyll (2017) by Daniel Kehlmann. Kehlmann is a renowned contemporary German author whose books are bestsellers. This one was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. The central character, Tyll Uelenspiegel is based on the jester character from medieval German folklore. It is an historical novel set during the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 – 1648. Tyll is a historical witness to the war and with each chapter almost acting as a short story or novella, we see him in various circumstances and with various social groups which included famous people such as Elizabeth Stuart daughter of King James 1 &6th who is by marriage the Queen of Bohemia. He finds himself in a range of challenging circumstances which he always manages to flee from carrying on with his role as an entertainer – a tight rope walker and conjuror. The war is a grim reminder of present times and hunger is forever present even for those characters born in comfortable circumstances. It’s a linguistically fascinating book, profound one minute, witty the next and with many historical insights. There is evidence of much meticulous research and has been described as ‘more than a novel because it has chosen wit and reason as well as art and knowledge as its allies.’ Christine thoroughly enjoyed it and was left wanting to read more by this author.
Di read: Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam. This is the first book in a trilogy which has had great popularity. It tells the tale of ‘Old Filth’ aka Sir Edward Feathers, a retired judge and widower, using time slips to cover the period from his birth through his experience as a Raj orphan - one of the many young children sent 'Home' from the East to be fostered and educated in England, to the extremities of his old age. FILTH is an acronym for ‘Failed in London Try Hong Kong’. The story reveals the wounds of a difficult and emotionally hollow childhood but also encapsulates a whole period from the glory days of British Empire, through the Second World War, to the present and beyond. As a young man he was attractive and dynamic but as we meet him, he finds it hard to navigate the world at the back end of his life and can come across as an annoying character. Many reviewers considered this book to be a literary masterpiece. e.g. The Guardian reviewer wrote “This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style.” Di found this to be a fascinating and moving character study and extremely well written.
Denise read: Going Infinite (2023) by Michael Lewis. Lewis was there when it happened, i.e. the cryptocurrency Bitcoin frenzy led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Before he’d turned thirty, he’d become the world’s youngest billionaire who at one point considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Bankman-Fried never liked rules and was allowed to live by his own. Lewis describes him as "an easily distractible, game-obsessed, brilliant, slovenly, cargo-shorts-clad eccentric whose most singular talent was his skill at calculating probabilities in a condition of constantly changing rules." Lewis followed him through the wild financial roller-coaster ride which finally fell apart leaving a tale of hubris and downfall. Reviewers suggest that Lewis is overly sympathetic towards his subject, something he refutes. Lewis said he believes that Bankman-Fried never lied to him, or at least "that he'd only lied by omission, not commission." It appears he started the book writing about an unsung hero, but by the end that hero becomes a villain. Di is fascinated by these intensely clever people who can create such gigantic fortunes and then lose them. She considers that Lewis is very good at second guessing what people are going to do, and very much enjoyed the book.
Read the notes from previous sessions here.
