Tuesday Tipplers Book Club - newbies welcome

[susan_]

Looking forward to tomorrow evening - see you there about 7:45!

[overcaffeinated]

Hi all - I won't make it as it's my pre-mat leave work drinks. Sorry! Hopefully see you next month... We'll see :)

[Red_Cat]

Hi All,

Here is the book list for this month, based, loosely, on the theme of 'Sport'

London Fields - Martin Amis

London Fields is a black comic, murder mystery. The murderee - Nicola Six - is searching for something and someone: her murderer. She knows the time, she knows the place, she knows the motive, she knows the means. She just doesn't know the man. London Fields is a brilliant, funny, multi-layered novel. It is a book in which the narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life... all Samson has to do is write it as it happens. The novel proceeds on the basis that the lying and cheating Keith Talent, known criminal and aspiring professional darts player, gearing up to play in the Sparrow Masters darts final, will kill Nicola...

Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy Sayers

Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Adverising Agency, but no-one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions... Disguised as his disreputable cousin Death Bredon, Lord Peter Wimsey takes a job - one that soon draws him into a vicious network of blackmailers and drug pedlars. Five people will die before Wimsey unravels a sinister deadly plot, with a game of cricket playing a pivotal role in the proceedings, from nearly blowing Wimsey's cover to handing him the final clue which is masterfully woven into the action.

Piccadilly Jim - PG Wodehouse

Beautiful young red head, Ann Chester, plots to kidnap her irritating cousin with the help of a former boxer, her uncle, and a rogue who has his eye on her. Society rabble-rouser and tabloid favourite Jimmy Crocker falls very much in love with Ann but nothing works out exactly as planned as criminals, detectives and cases of mistaken identity get in the way. In a dizzying plot that rivals Shakespeare for characters pretending to be others, impersonations pile on impersonations so that (for reasons that do become clear)Jimmy ends up having to spend a considerable portion of the book pretending to be himself. Endlessly good-humoured with a sparky heroine and a likeable hero, Piccadilly Jim is one of Wodehouse's most renowmed comic novels

Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett

Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. This is not going to be a gentleman's game. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman and the mysterious Mt Nutt. As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed forever. Behind the fantasy Terry Pratchett looks at very real contemporary issues, satirical, historical, fantastical and irresistible

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe

The title story in this classic collection tells of Smith, a defiant young rebel, inhabiting the no-man's land of institutionalised Borstal where he discovers a talent for long-distance running. This brings him to the notice of the Governor and he is entered into a race, one he could quite easily win, but chooses to deliberately lose. A ground breaking work, it captured the grim isolation of the working class in the English Midlands of the 1960's. Sillitoes's depiction of petty crime and deep-seated anger in industrial and desperate cities remains as potent today as it was almost half a century ago

Nana - Emile Zola

In the waning years of the French Second Empire, French prostitute Nana Coupeau rises from the streets to the heights of clandenstine French society by virtue of her performance as the lead in a fictional operetta. While her performance is terrible, her sex appeal and magnetism win over the audience. Subsequently Nana, despite the fact she can neither sing nor dance, becomes a star of the Varieties and the toast of Paris. When one of Nana's aspiring lovers runs two horses in the Grand Prix de Paris, Nana shows up to the race dressed in her lover's stable colours and displayed in an ornate carriage drawn by four white horses. A frenzy of gambling, gossiping and showing off ensues, in which it is discovered that no one has bet on the filly named for Nana. When the filly wins the triumph leads to a wild evening of celebrations, but ultimately ends in diaster. A totally engaging, ripping yarn about the rise and fall of a beautiful courtesan in Paris in the 1870's

[LadyBird1977]

Hello,

I'll be moving back to East Dulwich in late October and would like to join a book club, are you taking new members? I saw in the original thread it said just to buy the book and then turn up, is that still the case?

Thanks for the advice, Ashley

[Red_Cat]

Hi Ashley yes the book club is open to new members, next meeting by the way is 18th October, book is The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. We normally sit through the back on the left, hope to see you there.

[LadyBird1977]

Hello, thanks for getting back to me.

I won't quite be back then, my move date is 24th. So I guess I'll come along in November. Should I follow the thread to find out what the next book will be? And what time do you meet?

Thanks again, Ashley

[susan_]

Hi Ashley,

We meet at 7:45 for an 8 pm start in the Tippler.

I suggest you click the 'Follow this Thread' link (just below this post) and you'll receive an email when there is a new post. We don't tend to put much up on the thread except book lists and details of the next meet- up

[Red_Cat]

Just a reminder for tomorrow's meeting 7:45 for 8 at House of Tippler!

[overcaffeinated]

Hi all - sadly I'm going to miss this month too; my mum is visiting (I was due on Friday... nothing yet!). Nov seems unlikely but hopefully I'll see you all again in Dec or Jan!

[kennethw]

Hello Everyone, we had a good meeting this week, I volunteered to do a list for the next meeting, which will be at Tippler on 15 November at 7.45 for 8. :) We didn't manage a selection process this week, so if you post here we can pick the winner that way.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 46pp

A good man takes a potion that turns him into a freak of pure evil. A reasonable scientist is transformed - through the agency of science itself - into the living embodiment of unreason.

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe 50pp

A visitor to a gloomy mansion finds a childhood friend dying under the spell of a family curse. Roderick Usher?s fate is inextricably intertwined with that of his sister, Madeline, and that of their estate. As one falls, so do they all.

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James 80pp

An anonymous narrator recalls a Christmas Eve gathering at an old house, where guests listen to one another?s ghost stories. A guest named Douglas introduces a story that involves two children?Flora and Miles?and his sister?s governess, with whom he was in love.

[overcaffeinated]

Ooh this throws anonymous voting out of the window! Controversial :)

Good list, I like the sound of all three. I vote for House of Usher and Jekyll and Hyde.

[susan_]

Ditto - I've recently read Jekyll and Hyde so I vote for House of Usher and Turn of the Screw

Thanks Kenneth!

Did someone volunteer for the December/January list? If not I'd be happy to do it.

[Red_Cat]

Ive read them all cos i like that kind of stuff but Jekyll and Hyde we've already done before in bookclub so I'm voting for the other two.

1. House of usher

2. Turn of the Screw

[kennethw]

Sorry, I should have asked people to PM me. My votes would be for House of Usher and Dr Jekyll.

Currently

Jekyll - 2

Usher - 3

Screw - 1

[sparklehorse]

Hello, great list. I will be on holiday for this one though, so I will abstain ... Have a lovely time.

E

[hollyt]

I vote for Screw and Usher, do we have a date for this?

Holly x

[Red_Cat]

Holly it's the 15th November

[marlowe]

I vote for The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allen Po. I've read the other 2.

[marlowe]

Have we decided on a book yet?

[kennethw]

From the votes, the Fall of the House of Usher is a clear winner, so we'll pick that and see you all on the 15th.

[susan_]

Yea - I really like Poe!

[JenniferJ]

Missed a few bookclubs due to work and life stuff but will pop along on the 15th. See you then.

Jen xx

[susan_]

Hi bookclubbers - I'm going to have to make a short-notice trip to see family next week so I won't be able to come to book club on the 15th! I will still do the list for next time. I think last year we sort of skipped December or had two months to read the January book (given December is crazy busy for many people). Any thoughts of doing this again?

[Red_Cat]

Not sure if I make it tonight, have to work late, liked spooky house of usher!

[kennethw]

We had a good night last night, even managed to speak about the House of Usher for a bit, which we liked enough to wish it had been a bit longer.

We didn't set a date for December, or agree a list topic, so I guess I'll hand over to Susan for that one. :)