Book club reading suggestions and new members recruitment!

frogmella

Hi all,

This is a request from the book club. We could do with a few more members, numbers are running low, and we really need some more suggestions for books to read! Often I go through the e-mails I get from certain booksellers and also from a book-reading website and we choose from there, but I think it would be nice to hear what good books anyone else has read that they would recommend to us.

It is an informal club really, we choose a book a month that we generally all try and read, but often one or other of us doesn't for some reason or other! The only thing we ask is that books are reviewed, briefly, to give us all some inspiration for our next read.

So if you fancy joining please pop over to the book club thread (with a book of the month suggestion!) and get started!!

stickywicket

I've never done the book club mainly because I don't read many novels and don't need to feel under pressure to finish one – or even start one I've often wondered how well the book club worked given that there aren't all that many regular posters on here and even those who are regulars must have differing tastes. (My idea of a good book and my sister's or husband's differ enormously.)

One suggestion I can make though is that if you google something like 'if you like this book...' you'll probably get sites that suggest other authors you might enjoy on the basis of the ones you already read.

frogmella

Thanks Sticky! Although we don't usually have a time limit on reading the books! And we have a few disagreements about whether we liked them or not too!

I use one website that does the if you like try thing, although I like to try new things rather than all the same. I have read quite a few books I might not have done if I wasn't in the book club.

I keep wondering whether I should join a "real" book club, but, like you say about pressure, I don't think I would like feeling that I had to read a book.

dreamdaisy

I have been reading my way through the Sue Grafton Alphabet series, and a plethora of other crime novels (which are my preference) so I don't feel as though I should belong to the club, I'm not serious enough! I am not a great one for novels, and I don't want to feel 'pressurised' into reading something but I recommend the novels by Elizabeth Aston (especially the Mountjoy series) and Stella Gibbons of Cold Comfort Farm fame (if you haven't read that you must, it's a gem of a parody). DD

PS I am currently reading Morgue Drawer Four which has a very quirky premise: the soul of a murdered low-life has discovered he can talk to the pathologist who did his autopsy; he is trying to persuade him to investigate his death because it was murder whereas the police have 'written it off' as an accident.

frogmella

Thanks for the tips DD! I think I read cold comfort farm a long time ago. That book you are reading now sounds good - I will give it a look. I like crime books too, in fact there aren't many books I don't like! The club isn't really very serious - we read all sorts on there, honest!

tkachev

I'm a fact not fiction person so don't think I'd be of any use to the book club. I'm currently reading about a former Soviet gymnastics coach who now works in the USA.

Elizabeth

dreamdaisy

Given your background, tkachev, I'm not surprised about your choices but there is some very good fiction out there.

I confess I am enjoying MD4 but the language can be a little 'ripe' (and the attitude of the corpse towards women somewhat cave-mannish) but he is learning all manner of things from the duffle-coated pathologist. As I said, it's quirky. DD

hileena111

Love
HileenaI'm a fact and not a fiction book reader as well.
Although saying that my son says I do read fiction :shock:
Cookery books He said {when he was about 10 years old} all you do is read them
Love
Hileena

frogmella

Elizabeth - I know that Bubba really enjoys an autobiography but I suppose that is as far as our fact books go, although we read 12 years a slave recently and that was true!

Hileena - I read so many cook books, but I also cook from some of them. Mr F says I am need to employ a one in one out policy now!

DD - I have suggested MD4 as a BOTM so look out and see if it gets chosen. Still think I am going to read it anyway!

dreamdaisy

Oh crikey, be warned please, the language is somewhat ripe but the quirkiness of the plot is compensation for that. I finished it this morning - I chuckled as Pascha attended his funeral with Martin. I have the other two in the series (I think they cost me 49p each) but I won't read the second in the series just yet - I'm back to Sue Grafton with O for Outlaw. DD