Book club

I belong to two book clubs, and we had a meeting of one of them tonight. Delightful company, fun discussion (not totally about the book!) and a lot of chat about what else we’ve been reading.

We’ve read a variety of books over the several years we’ve been together, and we try to choose the next read by consensus, trying to pick something different, a detective story maybe, or a biography, or something in translation, or a factual work, contemporary, or maybe the Mann Booker Prize list… This evening we talked about ‘The Sign of the Four’ by Conan Doyle and next month we are going to discuss ‘Dominion’ by C.J.Sansom.

Our decision making process on the following months went something like this:

P: I heard about a good book we could read, it sounded very interesting called… er… um… let me look it up (consults note book)

S: What are we reading, tell me again so I can write it down.

L: Something about the sun was it?

P: No it’s set in Mumbai, and it’s called… um… something about beautiful, just a moment, I’m just trying to find it

J: What did you say we were reading? Something about the sun?

P: It’s about the slums in Mumbai, it’s a true story, well I think it is.

J: That reminds me of a book called ‘The Topknot Boy’ about an Indian boy…

S: Is that what we’re reading, ‘The Topknot Boy’?

L: No, it’s ‘Beautiful Sun’ or something…

P: Here we are, ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’

J: Actually, it’s ‘The Boy With The Topknot’

P: Oh, are we reading ‘The Boy With The Topknot’ then?

L: I thought we were reading ‘The Forever Beautiful’

S: ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’, so who’s it by?

P: Katherine Boo, with a K.

L: Katherine Koo do you mean or Katherine Book?

… and so it went on until we  did in the end decide!

• February – ‘Dominion’ C.J.Sansom
• March –  ‘Behind the Beautiful Forevers’ Katherine Boo
• April – ‘The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares’ – Joyce Carol Oates