Book club reading suggestions and new members recruitment!

frogmella
frogmella Member Posts: 1,111
edited 19. Jun 2014, 02:40 in Community Chit-chat archive
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!! :D

Comments

  • stickywicket
    stickywicket Member Posts: 27,697
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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 :lol: 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.
    If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
    Steven Wright
  • frogmella
    frogmella Member Posts: 1,111
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    Thanks Sticky! Although we don't usually have a time limit on reading the books! :lol: 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
    dreamdaisy Member Posts: 31,520
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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.
    Have you got the despatches? No, I always walk like this. Eddie Braben
  • frogmella
    frogmella Member Posts: 1,111
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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
    tkachev Member Posts: 8,332
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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
    Never be bullied into silence.
    Never allow yourself to be made a victim.
    Accept no ones definition of your life

    Define yourself........

    Harvey Fierstein
  • dreamdaisy
    dreamdaisy Member Posts: 31,520
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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
    Have you got the despatches? No, I always walk like this. Eddie Braben
  • hileena111
    hileena111 Member Posts: 7,099
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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 :o He said {when he was about 10 years old} all you do is read them :lol::lol:
    Love
    Hileena
  • frogmella
    frogmella Member Posts: 1,111
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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! :lol:

    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
    dreamdaisy Member Posts: 31,520
    edited 30. Nov -1, 00:00
    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
    Have you got the despatches? No, I always walk like this. Eddie Braben