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Showing posts from January, 2013

Julian Barnes - Sense of an Ending

Januarys book was a Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. A short book edged in black promising to be about a group of boys navigating sixth form, girls and exams. It turned out to be about a retired man looking back on his life We all thought how unsatisfied Tony, the lead character, was with his life although he was at pains to show that he wasn’t even to himself. He kept referring to how his daughter was fine and how he was still friends with his ex-wife and could go on holiday with her if he wanted to. It was though he was trying to reassure himself. There is a brilliant passage in the book about how being a realist turns out being safe and how time turns all well thought out decisions in to wobbly ones at best (sorry massively paraphrasing). The reader really got the impression that he thought he had lived a good life but now looking back he was slowly realising that he hadn’t and was loathe to admit it. We also discussed whether he couldn’t live the present life he

Lets get blogging again!

New year – new beginnings It’s time I started blogging again. I think I have been putting off blogging for so long as there are so many books now that have been missed out. I’m just going to have to face it I am never going to blog all the books that have been read since the last time I blogged. This is a shame as I liked having a proper record of the book club and what we had read.  Amongst others, we have reviewed the following in my time in non cyber space; A Christmas Mystery Jostein Gaarder – Our annual Christmas book. I hated it. It was so very boring. Lots of people loved it however and imagined reading it to their children/grandchildren. It was interesting to read about the geography but I wanted maps!!! Northanger Abbey Jane Austin – I loved it, loved it, loved it but this book totally split opinion. We wanted to review one of her less popular books but we really ended up falling in to 2 definite camps between love and hate. House of Silk Anthony Horowitz