Winter Reading for the Purple Book Club

Winter Reading for the Purple Book Club

Here is the list of suggested books.

Please make your 1^st and 2^nd choice in the comment box. I’ll collate the votes and put the most popular book choice on the Book Forum. Then we can all get reading!

A Hatful of Sky Terry Pratchet

Wacky magic and witchcraft. Fast moving and really good fun. You’ll either love it or hate it! Chosen by our beloved WW. (I have to put it on the list or she’ll poke me with her pointy stick! You have been warned.)

Armies of the Night Norman Mailer (non fiction novel)

Does history teach us anything? Mailer’s first hand account of the events surrounding the anti Vietnam War rally on the Pentagon in the Autumn of 1967. A good read to honour his memory.

Blind Assassin Margaret Attwood

A novel within a novel, a sister’s mysterious ‘accidental’ death , a science fiction story, a sailboat with a husband’s dead body - disparate elements woven together in a collage of ideas…. Have I given anything away?

Dress Your family in Corduroy and Denim Davis Sedaris

A collection of, off kilter, short stories about the author’s life growing up in the Southern States of the USA. Funny, poignant and sad.

Labyrinth Kate Moss

3 secrets, 2 women, 1 grail, complicated plot, intriguing story set in Carcassonne. (I bet Sally has read this one.)

Mad Bad and Dangerous to know Ranulph Fiennes (autobiography)

About an obsessive, rebellious and completely mad explorer. You’ve got to be mad if you attempt to walk solo to the North Pole.

Number 9 Dream David Mitchell

Eliji Miyake arrives in a Japanese city to track down the father he has never met. He is broke, 18 years old and mapless. Oh yes, and John Lennon somehow fits into the story.

Spilling the Beans Clarissa Dickson Wright (autobiography)

The surviving “Fat Lady” tells all about her remarkable and rather racy life. I didn’t realise she was the youngest woman ever to be called to the bar and what she did behind the Speaker’s Chair…Well!

The House on Beartown Road Elizabeth Cohen

There are lots of details about this book on Cait’s blog. Look there as she does a better job than me!

The People’s Act of Love James Meek

1919 Siberia. A revolutionary finds himself cut off in a very strange community. A community where it is very unwise to go on a journey with the locals if you are naïve. Oh! and there is also a love story in it somewhere.

(I declare an interest in this one as he is to be the guest of my other book group in January)

The Thirteenth Tale Dianne Setterfield

Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten. It was once the home of the March Family, but Angelfield House conceals a chilling secret - a riveting, multilayered mystery that twists and turns.

War Horse Michael Morpurgo

Spoken from the point of view of a horse. At the outbreak of WW1, Joey, young Albert’s beloved horse is sold to the cavalry and shipped to France. The horse has many adventures, serving on both sides until it finds itself on its own in no man’s land. Albert can’t forget his horse and, though not old enough to enlist, sets off to find Joey and bring him home. A very exciting and moving tale. ( How I sobbed when I read Black Beauty!)

(Picture - Composition by Piet Mondrian - oil, painted 1917)

Autumn Reading for the Purple Book Club

Here is the list of suggested books.

Please make your 1^st and 2^nd choices in the comment box. I’ll collate the votes and put the most popular book choice on the Book Forum. My apologies if I had to miss out any you suggested. We had 27 choices this time and I had to whittle them down.

A Hatful of Sky by Terry Pratchet - Wacky magic and witchcraft. Fast moving and really good fun. You’ll either love it or hate it!

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving - A novel about an odd friendship. It opens with an account of how the narrator accidentally kills Owen Meany’s mum with a stray ball. (Jane, I added this one even though it is one of the few books I got so irritated with I couldn’t bear to finish it.)

Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk - I couldn’t find any details on this book, only real estate adverts, so I guess it must be a real place.

Brick Road by Monica Ali - The life of a Bangladeshi village girl who ends up in a London tower block after an arranged marriage. (Not as dispiriting as it sounds)

Dancing on Thorns by Rebecca Horsfall - Moving epic romance with sultry sex scenes. The man is the obsessive dancer. A long road from ‘Ballet Shoes’

Fortune’s Rock by Anita Shreve - A moving story about unwise love and choices that transform a life. ( A meditation on the erotic life of a woman and class prejudice)

Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris (Yes, she wrote ‘Chocolat‘) - A complicated good and a bad witch story. They are trying to fit into a society that has no place for magic.

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - A murdered 14 year old tells her own story

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brien - 19^th C seagoing adventure, just think of ‘you know who’ in those tight trousers. The only problem is, if you get hooked on Jack Aubrey, there’s another 20 or so books in the series.

Restoration by Rose Tremain - 17C romp. The hero is trapped between his longings for wealth and power and the realisation that the pursuit of these trappings can lead to a shallow, empty life.

Rose by Martin Cruz Smith - An American adventurer adrift in Victorian England, confronting his own Heart of Darkness

Thames by Peter Ackroyd - If we want to get right away from ‘family’ stories why not this exploration of the Thames, from the source to the sea - chock full of anecdote, spirit of place, narrative and characters from Caesar to William Morris

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - Time bending cloak and dagger romp. A silly book for smart people. A post modern, farce.

Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen - Star crossed lovers in the circus world of 1932.

(The painting is Summer No.2 by Auguste Hebron)

Summer Reading for the Purple Book Club

This is the list of suggested books. Please make your 1^st and 2^nd choice in the comment box. I’ll collate the votes and publish the most popular book choice on the Book Forum

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood ( It is woven around the story of a Victorian Murderess, Grace Marks and is a tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery. An explosive mixture of sex, murder and class conflict.)

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (A darkly comedic novel that centres on a troubled family headed by a man who is convinced he has cancer.)

Black Swan Green by David Mitchel (Set in the Malverns, it is about a 13 year old boys experiences, and is described as, ‘touching, funny, simple and profound’.)

Date Expectations by Paul Reizen (One man’s odyssey through a sea of lonely hearts - a hilarious true story about the highs and lows of trying to find happiness through a lonely hearts club.)

Plotting for Beginners. A novel for new beginnings by Sue Hepworth and Jane Linfoot ( A funny novel, easy and uplifting, an ideal summer read, especially for women who like to write - and lets face it, we know a few of them. Don’t we?)

The New Harry Potter JK Rowling

The Olive Sisters by Amanda Hampson (Light fiction with an interesting background of family histories.)

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell (A short novel about what defines madness and sanity It also touches family life, institutional life and the British Raj.)

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates (Set in Mt Ephrain, New York it is about an ideal family with a secret. Something happens on Valentines Day 1976; something is hushed up.)

These are the runners up from last time in case you are still interested in reading them as well.

English Passenger by Matthew Kneale ( A wryly humorous seafaring yarn set around an 1857 voyage to Tasmania.)

Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (She meets the love of her life when she is 6 and he’s 36, but he’s only really 8 years older than her. It’s not really science fiction, it’s more about two people coping with a situation beyond their control

Redemption Falls by Joseph O’Connor (This explores the enigma of life through a love story and tale of war in 1860s America.)

Unless by Carol Shields (This is about a woman who’s comfortable life is in turmoil when she finds her daughter is sitting on a Toronto street corner with a begging bowl in her lap.)

I feel I want to read them all but that isn’t possible. The one with the most votes will be the Summer Purple book.

Now make your 1^st and 2^nd choice of book in the comments box.

Purple book club

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Welcome to the Purple Book Club!!

Hope this gets the ball rolling !!! Junes book club read was Margaret Forster's "Diary of an Ordinary Woman"