Purple Coo Book Group Autumn Read 2017

To vote for your favourite books please make your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below then, following a count up, I'll post the most popular title on the Purple Coo  main site and in Behind the Bike Sheds on Facebook. If you are unable to vote below, please let me know your choice via the Purple Coo main site or via Facebook

A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin

The autobiography of a talented writer better known for her works on the lives of other authors such as Austen, Hardy and Dickens.

Mount by Jilly Cooper

An effortless easy to read book about bonking and horses – need I say more?

Pekin to Paris by Dina Bennett

A true story of how Mr and Mrs Bennett buy a vintage 1940 GM La Salle and, despite having the day dreaming, carsick Dina as navigator, actually set off on a 7,800 mile race from China, across Mongolia, Russia, taking in the Baltic States, Poland and Germany along the way, with the intention of ending up in the Place de Vendome Paris 35 days later.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Two girls, both mixed race and from similar backgrounds, have an overwhelming love of dance and musical theatre. Friends since childhood, they grow up to follow very different destinies, one is a super-talented dancer, the other merely as dogsbody PA to an international rock star. (Man Booker short list 2017)

Skin Deep by Laura Wilkinson

When struggling art student and former exploited child model, Diana sets out to liberate the disfigured child, Cal from his world of enforced isolation among the low life of Manchester’s Hulme Estate, she maintains she’s acting in the child’s best interests. But Diana, ambitious for success in the avant-garde art world also recognises the vulnerable Cal as her muse.  But triumph and fame means Diana must follow an increasingly bizarre path, one that brings her into conflict with the needs of the now teenage Cal.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

It’s 1893 and newly widowed Cora Seaborne and her troubled son move away from London for the promise of fresh air and refuge in Colchester. Once there Cora, a keen and rational amateur naturalist, becomes embroiled in the Essex Serpent myth, a legendary beast said to be back roaming the Aldwinter coast. Suspecting an undiscovered species, she sets out to find out the truth, only to find herself entangled in a local legend, and the life of Aldwinter’s charismatic vicar as well

The painting is Pines and Tracks by the very talented Cheryl Culver

Purple Coo Book Group Summer Read 2017

To vote for your favourite books please make your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below then, following a count up, I'll post the most popular title on the Purple Coo  main site and in Behind the Bike Sheds on Facebook. If you are unable to vote below, please let me know your choice via the Purple Coo main site or via Facebook

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

One of the great novels of its time, this is James Joyce’s first book and it traces the religious and intellectual awaking of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s fictional alter ego. The ‘hero’ questions and rebels against Irish conventional life, in particular the repressive strictures of the Catholic Church, 

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

An amusing high comedy. It’s the 1950s and a clergyman’s daughter/mild mannered spinster – an excellent woman – manages to get totally embroiled in the lives of her new neighbours. This book opens up and lays bare a whole world of vanished manners and repressed desires.

Sarum by Edward Rutherford

A masterpiece epic novel over 1000 pages long, Sarum traces the turbulent course of British History via five families. In so doing it covers a rich tapestry of civilization through the ages, from the creation of Stonehenge to the present day.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide

At only 140 pages, this book is a jewel. A young workaholic couple rent a cottage on a large estate near Tokyo and a cat invites itself to stay. Life suddenly has more promise, more colour and the couple start to feel much more joy and meaning in their life together. Then something happens and all is changed.

The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne

A creepy thriller. It’s hard enough coping with the death in an accident of one identical twin daughter, but when the remaining twin, Kirstie, claims to her parents that they have mistaken her identity for that of her sister, Lydia, the couple’s world comes crashing down.


The picture is Regatta at Argenteuil by Claude Monet

Purple Coo Book Group Spring Read 2017

Don't forget, my Purple Friends, that to vote for your books you need to list your 1st and 2nd choices in the comments box below. If for any reason you can't let me know there, try leaving me a message on the Purple Coo site itself or via Facebook, I'll be Behind the Bike Sheds. After a count up I'll post the most popular title on the Purple Coo main site. It then becomes the Purple Coo Book Group Spring Read 2017 - so  let's get on with some more Happy reading.

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

When a handsome young stranger arrives in 1746 New York wishing to cash an order for £1000, can he be trusted or is he a smooth talking swindler? Racy and pacy, with wonderful twists and turns, I’m half way through this book already and it reminds me of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. I love it. This has to be the best read I’ve come across this year.

Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

It’s 1922 and the war’s been over for four years. When a genteel grieving widow and her spinster daughter take in a married couple of the ‘clerk class’ to make ends meet, snobbery abounds. The spinster daughter is trapped by her home circumstances and the flighty young wife is bored and although it’s an unlikely companionship they're soon very close friends, and as a result of their relationship, dire troubles emerge.

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Green

A humorous novel about a retired, conventional bank manager who meets his eccentric and amoral aunt at his mother’s funeral. Before long they are setting off on journeys together, with momentous and life changing results.

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

On the face of it, this is a novella relating a four day affair between a lonely farmer’s wife and a visiting National Geographic reporter. But somehow it transcends the mundane to be about what it is to love and be loved, in such an intense way life is never the same again.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

20 years after Bill Bryson was let loose to travel around Britain (remember Notes from a Small Island?) he’s been at it again to see what’s changed. Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath gets the predictably enjoyable Bryson treatment as he seeks out the ridiculous, the disreputable and the downright appealing.

(The illustration is a Hogarth Cartoon, The Rakes Progress)