Book Club: eReaders

I mentioned last month about the joys and disappointments of owning a Kindle, so I want to mention the other possibilities for digital reading that exist.  It won’t be an exhaustive list and won’t attempt to compare all features, but it will give some insight to those that are interested in the new way of reading.

Book Club: April

Recently, I decided to read the thriller that has been getting rave reviews in the press.  It is called "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn, and I looked on Amazon to purchase it for my Kindle.  I love my Kindle and I have many books loaded onto it, and it has been invaluable to me when travelling, because previously I needed to carry with me as many as 10 paperbacks to last me for the whole trip.

Book Club: February

One of the recent book selections for my Book Club was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Vintage) which is a semi-autobiographical novel by a doctor who was born in Ethiopia and had to leave when the regime changed and Haile Selassie was overthrown.  It is the author’s first novel after a number of successful non-fiction books, and it is a fascinating read.  In fact, there were a number of times when I needed to remind myself that this was fiction and not real.  His characterizations are so clear that the people described come alive on the pages, and he writes with such affection for them that one also falls under their spell.

Book Club: December

One of the books put forward for discussion in recent times was “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver W Sacks (Picador)”.  It is a substantial tome and densely written with case study after case study, and is compelling reading.  I wouldn’t recommend it as a book that you can read quickly, but rather one that you can keep coming back to from time to time and rereading some of the stories that interest you.

Book Club: November

I have been introducing some books that had been considered by our Book Club over the last couple of issues, and they were of starkly different styles.  To continue that theme this month I want to talk about a recent book nominated by one of our members, which he did so with some trepidation.  The reason for his concern was the format of the book.  Books like this used to be called “comic books” and I read many when I was younger.  However, these days they are called “graphic novels”.  I’m not sure what the difference is but for the purposes of this article it doesn’t matter.  There are some members of our club that admitted that they had never read a comic or graphic novel.  They didn’t think this was unusual, and thought that everyone grew up in families where comics were banned.  I don’t know who they thought read comics because they knew they existed and were readily available, and new additions were coming out all the time.  Nevertheless, they were ignorant of the format, supposedly because nothing worthwhile could be contained in a seemingly trivial format, fit for people that can’t read.

Book Club: Brideshead Revisited

Last month I discussed my book club, which meets once a month to discuss a book nominated by a member. The books nominated have been very broad in style and scope, but have tended to be biased towards non-fiction and history, however, of late there has been a tendency towards nostalgia and old novels have been nominated. One of these was the classic Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, which was the subject of a very good BBC series starring Jeremy Irons. It is sometimes a mistake to forget about some of the great writers of the past, because even though there are many great new authors now there was something special about authors in the past who didn’t have to compete with electronic media and instant gratification.

Book Club

Book clubs have always been popular, particularly with female readers.  But there are male only and mixed clubs as well.  There are many different ways to organise clubs, but the one I am familiar with meets each month to discuss a book nominated by one of the members.  So every member discusses the same book for about 15 minutes each.