Our Book Club Works Like This:
We are registered as an official Book Club with Exclusives. When it's your turn to host, you go and choose 10 books (I only took 9), to take out on apro. You then get to read out the blurbs on the back of each book to the girls at book club, and everyone decides together which books we'd like to buy for our club and the rest get returned. We each add R50 to the Book Club fund and the books and a bit of the food for the evening get paid for from the total.
I recently watched The Hunger Games and I was super keen to read the books. So I got the trilogy for our Book Club and then I was on a bit of a "books that have been made into movies" tangent and I kind of stuck with that theme for most of our books.
These are the books that I chose:
1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Johnathan Safran Foer
In a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key... But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open? So begins a quest that takes Oskar across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives and complete strangers.
- I chose this book because I saw the preview for the movie and I like to read the book before I watch the
movie whenever possible. The movie does look really good though.
2. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - Deborah Moggach
Enticed by advertisements for a newly restored palatial hotel and filled with visions of a life of leisure, and mango juice in their gin, a group of very different people leave England to begin a new life in India. On arrival they are dismayed. But, as they soon discover, life and love can begin again, even in the most unexpected circumstances.
- Also been turned into a movie, everyone I've spoken to who's seen it says its great but the book is
better. Young and old alike. I prefer having a book with its original cover (not the movie poster cover) but
they didn't the original in stock.
3. The Paris Wife - Paula McLain
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
- I might have a slight obsession with the 1920's and its hedonistic, bohemian ways. Particularly the group of
individuals who feature in this book. If you haven't seen it yet, you should watch Woody Allen's Midnight
In Paris. One of my favourite movies, and by far my favourite Woody Allen film.
4. We The Animals - Justin Torres
Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.
Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.
- I'll admit it - I judged this book by it's cover. Which is awesome. The title intrigued me and once I'd read
the back I was sold on it.
5. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before - and survival, for her, is second nature.
(Spoiler Alert: If you have no idea what The Hunger Games Trilogy is about
and don't want to find out, skip the next two books)
6. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
After winning the brutal Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta return to their district, hoping for a peaceful future. But their victory has caused rebellion to break out ... and the Capitol has decided that someone must pay. As Katniss and Peeta are forced to visit the districts on the Capitol's Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever.
7. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
Katniss Everdeen's having survived the Hunger Games twice makes her a target of the Capitol and President Snow, as well as a hero to the rebels who will succeed only if Katniss is willing to put aside her personal feelings and serve as their pawn.
8. Skippy Dies - Paul Murray
'Skippy and Ruprecht are having a doughnut-eating race one evening when Skippy turns purple and falls off his chair . . .'
And so begins this epic, tragic, comic, brilliant novel set in and around Dublin's Seabrook College for Boys. Principally concerning the lives, loves, mistakes and triumphs of overweight maths-whiz Ruprecht Van Doren and his roommate Daniel 'Skippy' Juster, it features a frisbee-throwing siren called Lori, the joys (and horrors) of first love, the use and blatant misuse of prescription drugs, Carl (the official school psychopath), various attempts to unravel string theory . . . while at the same time exploring the very deepest mysteries of the human heart.
- I have an affinity for Irish books and characters. Give me a book set in or around Dublin and I'll eat it right
up with my eyes. (Did I hear you say Meave Binchy? Marian Keyes? Oh, I've read them all.) This also
reminds me a bit of one my favourite stories: Spud.
9. How To Be A Woman - Caitlin Moran
It's a good time to be a woman: we have the vote and the Pill, and we haven't been burnt as witches since 1727. However, a few nagging questions do remain... Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask when you're going to have a baby? This title provides answers to such questions.
- I read an interview with Caitlin Moran in the Marie Claire (I think?) a while ago and I've been meaning to
read this book ever since. She has a very interesting way of looking at "feminism" - in the sense that, if you
are a woman and you believe you have rights: you are a feminist. And she's also very funny. Which I
admire greatly in women.
We ended up keeping The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay, We The Animals, Skippy Dies and The Paris Wife. Our Book Club already has Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close and the girls weren't keen on Moran's feminist questions ("I already know the answers to all those questions" - @Stellllaaaaaaa) or on old people moving to India.
No comments:
Post a Comment