A message dropped in to my in- box; it's my turn to create the list of suggestions for the next Book Club read. This always fills me with dread ever since one plain-speaking and slightly formidable member dismissed my first ever selection, when I was still a newbie, as 'rather too light-weight for her'.
That was many years ago now, and I'm not a newbie any more, and have since suggested books that were much appreciated. Even so, I do have this distant memory, like an elusive bad smell, when my turn comes round again.
Our system has changed; we offer a short selection to the group and then a choice is made. That makes it all a bit less stressful!
This time I'm suggesting four books, three of which I've read, and one I've just started.
Mrs Bridge, by Evan S Connell is a strangely written book; 144 short chapters each recording and incident, event, perhaps just a telephone conversation in the life of Mrs Bridge. She's a deeply conventional wife and mother of a prosperous hard working lawyer in Kansas City, in the 1930s and 1940s. Her life is so proscribed by the 'country club' life, and she is so unaware or the arts, music, the rest of the world that she hardly seems to exist. It is by turns comic, and truly sad. This was recommended recently by a schoolfriend and I found the story, and the structure, and life of Nrs Bridge extraordinary.
A Book On Silence, by Sara Maitland is her autobiography, and also musings and reflections on her search for silence. I'm not very far into the book yet...
The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey, set in 1975 or thereabouts, is about a 12 year-old girl and her friends trying to solve the Yorkshire Ripper murders. I posted on the this a week or so ago.
Of Stone and Sky, by Merryn Glover took me some concentration to read, but I found it worth the effort; set on and around a remote Scottish sheep farm, you gradually work out how and why everything that happened did happen. Very atmospheric.
I was also tempted to suggest an anthology of poems by Carol Ann Duffy, but couldn't decide which, so I'll save that for next time. I like her poems, clever, twisty, thought-provoking.
Then my latest parcel of books arrived from WOB, the second-hand online booksellers I tend to use;
I'm teaching a Bach Prelude in C minor which is why I bought the piano book, and WOB have a diabolical system where if you buy three books from a pre-loved category you can have the fourth book free - oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. So I always buy four!
I loved the serialised Alec Guiness diaries on BBCsounds so decided to get the book to enjoy them all over again.
I was snorting with laughter and reading bits out to my husband from Lucy Mangan's book 'Are we having fun yet?'. 'Bookworm' (and its sequel 'Bookish') have been on my radar for several months, along with the Susan Hill 'Howard's End is on the Landing', and when I saw the pop up on someone else's blog - sorry, can't remember whose now - I added them to the list to make up the three. This four for the price of three offer doesn't really bear scrutiny - I suspect I'm only buying all the books in order to get the free one, which, if I think too hard about it all, isn't exactly a saving after all...
I'll have to save 'Bookworm' and 'Howard's End is on the Landing' as book club suggestion until next time around.
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