Beautiful Ruins By Jess Walter #inbetweeny

The very beautiful Beautiful Ruins was bought by a friend for my mum for Christmas from the very lovely Forum Books in Corbridge as part of their mystery book range. The book comes wrapped in brown paper with a label (doubling up as a very useful bookmark later) giving a brief description of the book hidden inside. It's a brilliant way of discovering new books being a total lucky dip.

This particular book was described by the label as "From 1960s Italy to modern day Hollywood - this novel brims with love and life! Bellisimo" Would you have guessed which book was awaiting?

I loved the cover, its bold, it stands out, its beautiful and the description made me immediately think of another book club book - The Affair. Would it be as good?

It was better, by miles! So good that I actually e-mailed myself various quotes from the book so I could blog about them (very sad I know). The 'info dump' we expose ourselves to every morning when we wake up (Twitter interactions, Facebook notifications, news updates, weather and traffic alerts all before we have got out of bed). The endless pitching, not just of films but of a better life (and even death) that's thrown at us from all angles.

The book flitted about from various perspectives and time lines making it a good 'summer read' should you be lying about a pool and wanting to dip in and out as you please. Yet it had great depths which more suited my cold Easter in Scotland. I loved the film idea segments (pitches) being perfect little well written short stories featuring quotes like "we marched up that boot [wartime Italy] like a woman rolling up a stocking". Yes that was one I e-mailed.

The writing was strong throughout (I particularly loved the reference to the doomed Deane party, the tragic Deane party, I don't know why it just tickled me) and the plot constantly surprised the reader. You didn't know where the book was going to go next and although every character was flawed Walter took you with them, you felt they were all struggling for something better just out of their reach.

It was funny, it was sad, it was beautiful, with really really good writing, Elizabeth Taylor and a large cameo from Richard Burton. If this isn't already on your to read list make it so. Now.

Oh and who now wants to watch Cleopatra?

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Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you). I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

I expected to be emotionally drained after reading this one and to be honest (in a weird kind of way) I didn’t mind the thought that I would be. This was backed up by the introduction describing a brilliant young man whose writing was breath taking and whose story was devastating. Emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions was surely in store. I didn’t mind the beginning of the book although I was slightly surprised when we delved so deeply into Kalanthi's past in what was only a slim book. I was willing to gloss over the large number of references to his search as a youth to finding the meaning of life and what makes us, us as after all this was written by someone forced to ponder that very question. I also found the medical training he did vaguely interesting, I appreciated the reverence he placed in relation to the cadaver he was required to cut open as part of his medical training. However when it became apparent the actual portion of the book to do with him receiving hi

Village Christmas: And Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee #BookOfTheMonth #OneRuleOfBookClub

When suggested last month we snapped up this 150 page or so collection of Lee's descriptions, memoirs and musings. Consisting of Chapters of no more than a few pages, topics included the river Severn, a pub and the landscaping of a garden! Winter, including Christmas, was the opening section so more than met the one rule of book club requirement (we review a Christmas book at Christmas). Spring, Summer and Autumn sections followed and one of the group chose to stop reading after the Winter section in order to read each section in its correct season. I love this idea but would either forget and end up reading them all in Autumn or would get frustrated that I still hadn't finished such a slim book that I had started in 2018. "Children trapped in new concrete estates will be denied the freedom we knew. They'll become prisoners of television, as most children are today, and as they grow up they'll start hanging about the streets in gangs and stealing cars."

Cramlington Book Club

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