Tuesday Tipplers - we also read books

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Not a drinking group but rather a reading group with drinks and food (both optional). A reincarnation of the Green and Blue Book Group since the establishment of that name is no more. We now meet in The House of Tippler on Lordship Lane on a Tuesday evening near the beginning of the month. We are a friendly, informal group that doesn't indulge in lit crit but we like to explore plot, character and meaning in a thoughtful way.

We choose the books we read in an interesting and democratic manner. Themes are discussed at the meeting and then someone volunteers to produce and share a list of titles. We then vote on our preferred title and the next book is selected. Researching the list is an enjoyable part of the process and part of the reason for being in a group, for me at least, is to have reading boundaries expanded.

We also have a presence on Reading groups for Everyone: http://readinggroups.org/groups/location/london/southwark/tuesday-tipplers.html

Our next title is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. We will meet at 7:45 for 8: on Tuesday 4th June in the front part of The House of Tippler. We always welcome new people so hope to see you there.

P.S. we didn't choose a theme for the next list. Any takers?

Alec

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

The opening line of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca - "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." is almost an alternative title for the novel it has become so familiar. It does feature in one or two of the lists of best opening lines out there but not as many as you might think.

Looking forward to talking about it on 4th June at The House of Tippler.

Alec

[Red_Cat]

Just a reminder of our next meet this coming Tuesday.

Elaine, did you kind of sort of maybe slightly volunteer to do the list for next month??? Probably too late now and we didn't choose a theme either, sure we can come up with something on Tuesday, maybe a second choice from one of our previous lists??

Cat

[Alec John Moore]

Looking forward to this evening and discussing Rebecca. My version of the book - Kindle - also had an interesting critique of Rebecca. Fortunately I read the story first before I discovered the analysis - by someone who has written a "sequel" to Rebecca it seems.

Apparently the first film of the book was made by Hitchcock in 1940 and stars Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter. I wonder if we could arrange a screening somewhere.

[Alec John Moore]

We had a lovely time discussing Rebecca, the dominant, absent character. Couldn't decide if it's a feminist novel but the question prompted some interesting discussion.

Our next title is Archangel by Robert Harris. This Amazon review is by Nick Wroe:

"Before political journalist Robert Harris turned to fiction and resurrected Hitler for his best selling novel Fatherland, he also wrote a hugely entertaining account of the farce surrounding the publication of the hoax Hitler diaries. Archangel, with the obvious exception of substituting Hitler for that other 20th-century ogre Josef Stalin, can be seen as something of a combination of these previous projects. The novel opens in present-day Russia where a louche Oxford academic, Christopher "Fluke" Kelso, is attending a conference on the newly available Stalin archives. Kelso quickly becomes embroiled in a quest for some of Uncle Joe's still secret papers--and also a quest to make his own academic reputation--but soon uncovers more than he bargains for. The ghosts of the old authoritarian past exert a peculiar and all too powerful tug on Yeltsin's fragile capitalist democracy and as Kelso is drawn ever nearer to the secret that lies in the remote White Sea port of Archangel so the tragedies of the past become hideously more plausible in the present. Harris is historically sound, politically astute and his acute insight into the apparatus of state repression and minds of despots is unnerving. But most of all he tells a terrific yarn and Archangel sees him on top form. This is his best yet."

We meet to discuss it on Tuesday 9th July at 7.45 for 8.00 in the House of Tippler.

Hope to see you there.

Alec

[Alec John Moore]

What a page turner. Finished it last night so I'm very nearly a month ahead of schedule. Might have to skim read again before we meet to discuss it next month. Hope you are enjoying it. If you haven't read it then why not get a copy and join us on the 9th at 7:45 for 8:00 in the House of Tippler?

Alec

[susan_]

Just finished Archangel and am looking forward to our discussion next week.

As promised I've put together a list for next month. I chose "parallel novels", a genre which seems to include prequels, sequels and tangents from classics written by a different author. I'll bring a few print-outs along with me on the 9th.

I'm also proposing a slight tweak to our voting process which I hope we can discuss and perhaps adopt. Our current process is for each person to submit a vote for a single book and have a run-off if there is a tie. I propose that each person submit a vote for two books and the book with the most votes overall is the winner. I often have difficulty deciding on just on book for our vote (so voting for two would solve this) and I've noticed that we sometimes have a vote split across a few books (so voting for two might bring us to a more widely-supported winner in one vote). In any case, let's discuss.

Here's the list:

Finn: A Novel by Jon Clinch (Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature?s most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn?s father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain?s classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own.

Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body?flayed and stripped of all identifying marks?drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim?s identity, shape Finn?s story as they will shape his life and his death. Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn?s terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn?s mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity?not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright.

Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America?s past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new.

March, by Geraldine Brooks (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)

Set during the American Civil War, ?March? tells the story of John March, known to us as the father away from his family of girls in ?Little Women?, Louisa May Alcott?s classic American novel. In Brooks?s telling, March emerges as an abolitionist and idealistic chaplain on the front lines of a war that tests his faith in himself and in the Union cause when he learns that his side, too, is capable of barbarism and racism. As he recovers from a near-fatal illness in a Washington hospital, he must reassemble the shards of his shattered mind and body, and find a way to reconnect with a wife and daughters who have no idea of the ordeals he has been through.

As Alcott drew on her real-life sisters in shaping the characters of her little women, so Brooks turned to the journals and letters of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May?s father, an idealistic educator, animal rights exponent and abolitionist who was a friend and confidante of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The story spans the vibrant intellectual world of Concord and the sensuous antebellum South, through to the first year of the Civil War as the North reels under a series of unexpected defeats.

Confessions of an Ugly Step Sister, by Gregory Maguire (Cinderella)

We have all heard the story of Cinderella, the beautiful child cast out to slave amongst the ashes. But what of her stepsisters, the homely pair exiled into ignominy by the fame of their lovely sibling? What fate befell those untouched by beauty ... and what curses accompanied Cinderella's looks?

Set against the backdrop of seventeenth-century Holland, CONFESSIONS OF AN UGLY STEPSISTER tells the story of Iris, an unlikely heroine who is swept from the lowly streets of Haarlem to a strange world of wealth, artifice, and ambition. Iris's path becomes intertwined with that of Clara, the mysterious and unnaturally beautiful girl destined to become her sister. While Clara retreats to the cinders of the family hearth, Iris seeks out the shadowy secrets of her new household - and the treacherous truth of her former life.

The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood (The Odyssey, by Homer)

For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband was off fighting the Trojan war was not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he had been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy and bloodthirsty suitors at bay? And then, when Odysseus finally returns and slaughters the murderous suitors, he brutally hangs Penelope's twelve beloved maids. What were his motives? And what was Penelope really up to?

Critically acclaimed when it was first published as part of Canongate's Myth series, and following a very successful adaptation by the RSC, this new edition of The Penelopiad sees Margaret Atwood give Penelope a modern and witty voice to tell her side of the story, and set the record straight for good.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte)

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine.

This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.

Mary Reilly, by Valerie Martin (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

From the acclaimed author of Orange Prize winning PROPERTY comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid.

Faithfully weaving in details from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, Martin introduces an original and captivating character: Mary is a survivor-scarred but still strong-familiar with evil, yet brimming with devotion and love. As a bond grows between Mary and her tortured employer, she is sent on errands to unsavory districts of London and entrusted with secrets she would rather not know. Unable to confront her hideous suspicions about Dr. Jekyll, Mary ultimately proves the lengths to which she'll go to protect him. Through her astute reflections, we hear the rest of the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, and this familiar tale is made more terrifying than we remember it, more complex than we imagined possible.

[Alec John Moore]

Hi Susan

Great idea about voting and it should help me deal with the fascinating list you've provided. I mean, I can't decide. See you next week.

Alec

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Looking forward to tomorrow night. Should be lovely, particularly if the weather holds.

I'm wondering how you feel about authors promoting their books. Rhidian Brook is on the campaign trail with his new title which has had generally good reviews. He posted the following on Facebook today. Something to discuss tomorrow, perhaps.

Alec

The Aftermath Book Club Autumn Tour

If you're in a book club and choose to read The Aftermath this summer/autumn, I am willing to come and do a talk/reading/Q & A for your group and prepared to travel (as long as you feed and water me and don't give me too much abuse). I've already done this for four groups in London and it's a great way to meet readers and get feedback - "Why did you write such a cliched sentence on page 103?" being one question I received from a fairly hard-to-impress book group in Wimbledon. (Obviously I'd be over the moon to receive an invitation, and sick as parrot/dog if your group decides to read something else).

The Aftermath is an ideal book club book being 'page-turning,' 'entertaining', 'compelling' 'thought provoking' and 'gripping' to name just a few of the readers comments on Amazon. If you're interested in getting me to talk your group, make your request via Facebook or contact me via rhidianbrook.com. If you need more persuasion check out the reviews on amazon here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Aftermath-Rhidian-Brook/dp/0670921122/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371195547&sr=8-1&keywords=rhidian+brook

[kennethw]

Sorry everyone , will have to leave tonight, had a bad attack of hay fever.

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Rhidian Brook has said yes to the 6th August! So, I'll talk to Rye Books about a "bulk" order if that's OK and let you know the deal. Please let me know if you want to get your copy of The Aftermath that way.

Really enjoyable evening yesterday, by the way.

Best wishes

Alec

[Red_Cat]

That's good news - exciting!

Think I'll get the book on kindle though as it's cheaper

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Looking forward to seeing Rhidian Brook at the House of Tippler on Tuesday evening at 8.00. He'll be talking about his latest novel, The Aftermath. It's set in Hamburg in 1946 and explores the tense relationships between the Germans who are struggling with poverty, hunger and homelessness and the British occupiers running their `zone'. I just learned that Ridley Scott is slated to make the film of the book. Interesting. So, if you've read the book, why not pop along to the House of Tippler this Tuesday 6th August at 7.45 for 8.00.

Best wishes

Alec

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

You don't read a book to get to the middle as I heard someone say earlier this evening on Radio 4. If you've read to the end of Rhidian Brook's The Aftermath then why not join the author and the Tuesday Tipplers tomorrow evening 6th August at about 8:00 to hear how Hamburg in 1946, Thought for the Day and Ridley Scott are connected.

Hope to see some of you then.

Alec

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

That was a really enjoyable time with Rhidian Brook yesterday evening. How often do you get the chance to talk in an informal and equal way with an experienced, published writer about their working process as well as their output? And he was so generous, showing the photos of his grandfather's time in Hamburg after the war - the inspiration for The Aftermath. I hope we can do something similar in the future.

In September we meet on the 3rd at 7.45 for 8.00 in The House of Tippler to discuss . . . . .

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte)

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine.

This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.

Now where's my Kindle?

Alec

[susan_]

Annoyingly I am no longer able to attend on the 3rd, so I'll have to miss out on the discussion this month. I'll check the forum for our September book and date.

I was planning to bring up the London Film Festival at our meeting (http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff) to see if anyone might be interested in getting together to see something. It runs 9-20 October but I don't think the schedule is out yet.

[JS33]

Argh, I'm so sorry but I'm suddenly minus childcare and will need to miss tonight's meeting. I'd even read the book, too, and had been looking forward to the discussion because I found it a bit baffling. .. .

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Some of the first who read this post may also be listening to Jonathan Coe, author of The Rotters Club and What a carve up, on Radio 4's Front Row with Mark Lawson. Coincidentally, What a carve up is our book for October. Thank you Radio 4 for the serendipity.

Yesterday evening we had a good chat about The Wide Sargasso Sea, which broadened out into discussions of madness more generally and perceptions thereof. I really do appreciate my monthly Tuesday evening at the House of Tippler. With the cocktails, the range of bottled beer and tasty food, Oh, and the lovely company, I'd be daft not to.

We meet to discuss What a carve up on Tuesday 1st October at 7.45 for 8.00. You know the venue.

And, we hope to arrange some visits to film screenings since the season of film festivals is upon us. Watch this space.

Alec

[Red_Cat]

Sorry not to show up last night, was so tired thought I'd have a nap and just never woke up! (well obviously eventually I did or wouldn't be writing this). Hopefully will do better next month esp. As you've chosen the absolutely fantastic 'what a carve up!' - one of my favourite books.

See you in oct if not before if there is a film to see

Cat x

[flairyfairy]

Just wondered - is there room for a new joiner?

[susan_]

New joiners are always welcome, do come along. We often sit at the front tables and usually at least one of us has the book out on the night, so you'll be able to spot us easily.

[flairyfairy]

Great! I will see you there. Better go and get reading...

[Alec John Moore]

Hi

Nothing but a man. "An old classice that I never even knew existed", Xan Brooks, Guardian film critic.

Just came across this and immediately thought it could be a really good one for us to see:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2013/sep/26/why-nothing-but-a-man-you-should-see-video

See here for dates and times:

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=nothing-but-a-man

It plays at BFI until 10th October so we should be able to arrange something. It was made/released in 1964 and has Stevie Wonder on the soundtrack - worth going just for that!

Alec

[waddinac]

Happy Sunday everyone,

Right, so the theme for next month was music and it's a slightly longer list than usual as I found myself spoilt for choice. I hope it meets with your approval...

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

It has been said often enough that baby boomers are a television generation, but the very funny novel High Fidelity reminds that in a way they are the record-album generation as well. This funny novel is obsessed with music; Hornby's narrator is an early-thirtysomething English guy who runs a London record store. He sells albums recorded the old-fashioned way?on vinyl?and is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically adulthood. The book is in one sense a love story, both sweet and interesting; most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music.

Hornby's first novel, an international bestseller and instantly recognized by critics and readers alike as a classic, helps to explain men to women, and men to men. Rob is good on music: he owns a small record shop and has strong views on what's decent and what isn't. But he's much less good on relationships. In fact, he's not at all sure that he wants to commit himself to anyone. So it's hardly surprising that his girlfriend decides that enough is enough.

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro

In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning.

Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

Pepperland - Barry Wightman

What happens when one revolution dies and a new one begins?

She asks him?do you want to play your little rock ?n roll songs or change the world? He says?both.

Pepperland is a ?70s rock and roll race through the heartland of America?a love letter to the power of new-fangled computers and the importance of a guitar pick. Pepperland is about missing information, missing people, missing guitars, paranoia, brothers, revolution, Agents of the Federal Government, IBM, Hugh Hefner, a Dark Stranger, love, death and the search for it amidst the wreckage of recession-wracked, entropically rundown mid-seventies America.

The Pianist - Wladyslaw Szpilman

The last live broadcast on Polish Radio, on September 23, 1939, was Chopin's Nocturne in C# Minor, played by a young pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman, until his playing was interrupted by German shelling. It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years in between, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews of Warsaw and on Warsaw itself, related with a dispassionate restraint borne of shock. Szpilman, now 88, has not looked at his description since he wrote it in 1946 (the same time as Primo Levi's If This Is A Man) it is too personally painful. The rest of us have no such excuse.

The Cellist of Sarajevo - Stephen Galloway

In a city under siege, four people whose lives have been upended are ultimately reminded of what it is to be human. From his window, a musician sees twenty-two of his friends and neighbours waiting in a breadline. Then, in a flash, they are killed by a mortar attack. In an act of defiance, the man picks up his cello and decides to play at the site of the shelling for twenty-two days, honouring their memory. Elsewhere, a young man leaves home to collect drinking water for his family and, in the face of danger, must weigh the value of generosity against selfish survivalism. A third man, older, sets off in search of bread and distraction and instead runs into a long-ago friend who reminds him of the city he thought he had lost, and the man he once was. As both men are drawn into the orbit of cello music, a fourth character- a young woman, a sniper- holds the fate of the cellist in her hands. As she protects him with her life, her own army prepares to challenge the kind of person she has become.

A novel of great intensity and power, and inspired by a true story, The Cellist of Sarajevo poignantly explores how war can change one's definition of humanity, the effect of music on our emotional endurance, and how a romance with the rituals of daily life can itself be a form of resistance.

Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie

Many may remember the tale of Robert Johnson, the musician who sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in exchange for being the best blues guitarist around.

What many may not know is that after this tragic deal in Mississippi, Johnson ended up in a small town on the Spokane Indian reservation in Washington state - at least that's how author Sherman Alexie tells it.

In his new book Reservation Blues, Alexie spins the fictional tale of Johnson's adventure at a new crossroads, this one in a small town called Wellpinit, Wash. It is here that he comes to seek out Big Mom, a local medicine woman, and, in so doing, leaves his famous guitar in the hands of misfit storyteller Thomas Builds-the-Fire.

Builds-the-Fire takes up Johnson's magical guitar and, along with Victor Joseph, Junior Polatkin and two Flathead Indian sisters named Chess and Checkers, goes on to build a reservation blues band that takes the Northwest by storm.

As the band plays club after club, Alexie uses music as a cross-cultural bridge, without compromising the cultural integrity of his characters. The band members seem to take on the gamut of problems faced by Indians on the reservation today, battling everything from alcoholism to violence, political corruption to sexual abuse.

Ghosts from the past, both personal and historical haunt the musicians, serving both to hold them back and urge them on.

[susan_]

For November we chose: Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall - Kazuo Ishiguro

We're meeting at the usual place on 5th November, 7:45 for 8. Don't forget the happy hour cocktails if you arrive before 8!

(I am persevering with Johnathan Coe!)