Book Circle 4
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CURRENT GROUP STATUS
The group has face-to-face meetings on the first Tuesday of each month starting at 10:30 am at a group member's house.
Our current category of books we are reading is a Book that I have never read but wanted to. The remaining books in this series are:
- May 2024: In Every Face I Meet by Justin Cartwright (Jill’s choice)
- June 2024: The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (chosen by Jane)
- July 2024: The Island by Victoria Hislop (Marion’s choice)
- August 2024: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (David's choice)
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Our meetings are usually held at Jill's house in Hereford Rd, Acton, London, W3. Meetings there now start at 10:30 am on the first Tuesday of the month. We are also able to run these meetings as 'hybrid' ones, if necessary, with some people present and others joining on Zoom.
Trains on the Elizabeth line now call at Acton Main Line station every 15 minutes and there is a service (towards Paddington) that gets there at 10:12am and also at 10:27am; Jill's house is less than 10-minutes walk from the station.
This book circle has been meeting since Autumn 2016, and we currently have eight members and, due to space limitations at our venue, currently have NO room for any more members.
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Originally, each member selected 2 books, and we finished reading the last of these in December 2017. Our selection of books to read in 2018 was those that had been written in a foreign language and translated into English. During 2019 we read books which were all written by Canadian authors, and in 2020 we read a selection of American novels published in the second half of the 20th Century. For the second half of 2020 we read books which had all been Prize Winners of various Book prizes, in 2021/22 we read a selection of Our Favourite Books, and in 2022 we read books that had been published in the 21st Century.
A full list of all the books we have read as a group is shown below.
Group Convener: Ursula Hilton-Jones, tel - 020 8567 5993, or email through the blue bird, top right.
List of books read:
A Book that I have never read but wanted to
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (Phil’s choice)
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Ingrid’s choice)
The Radetsky March by Joseph Roth (chosen by Uschi)
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (John's choice)
A Book that I Like
Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov (David's choice)
The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting (chosen by Marion)
The Rain before it falls by Jonathan Coe (Jane’s choice)
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (chosen by Johnny)
Me before You by Jo Jo Moyes (chosen by Phil)
Birds without Wings by Louis de Bernieres (Jill’s choice)
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri (Ingrid’s choice)
An Education by Lynn Barber (Uschi’s choice)
The Riders by Tim Winton (John's choice)
Books published in the 21st Century
Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope (first published 2000, chosen by David)
The Past by Tessa Hadley (first published 2015, chosen by Johnny)
Island of Wings by Karen Altenburg (first published 2011, Marion’s choice)
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (first published 2021, chosen by John)
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (first published 2019, Ingrid’s choice)
The Late Train to Gypsy Hill by Alan Johnson (first published 2021, chosen by Jane)
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers (first published 2020, chosen by Rosemary)
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (first published 2020, Uschi’s choice)
Middle England by Jonathan Coe (first published 2018, Phil’s choice)
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion (first published 2013, chosen by Jill)
A Favourite Book
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr (Johnny's choice)
Le Grand Meaulnes (in an English translation!) by Alain-Fournier (chosen by Rosemary)
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver (chosen by Marion)
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (chosen by John)
What I loved by Siri Hustvedt (chosen by Uschi)
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (chosen by Jane)
Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (chosen by Chris)
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (chosen by Ingrid)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (chosen by Phil)
Wild Swans by Jung Chang (chosen by Jill)
The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks (Maggie's choice)
Book Prize Winners
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (chosen by Rosemary, The 2017 Costa Novel Award)
The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald (Ursula's choice, Berlin Literature Prize 1974, Literatur Nord Prize and Johannes Bobrowski Medal, was in line for Nobel Prize in Literature)
Lullaby by Leila Slimani (Jane's choice, 2016 Prix Goncourt, 2017 Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle)
Milkman by Anna Burns (chosen by Mavis, Booker Prize 2018)
The Road Home by Rose Tremain (Deirdre's choice, Orange Prize 2008)
Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarcvzuk (chosen by Ingrid, Nobel Prize for Literature 2019 for her work)
Augustus by John Williams (Christine's choice, Shared US National Book Award for Fiction 1973)
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (chosen by Phil, Nebula and Hugo Awards 1973/4 in Science Fiction)
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, September 2020 (Jill's choice, Joint winner of the Booker Prize 2019)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, August 2020 (Maggie's choice, 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
American novels from 1950 to 2000
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (July 2020)
Stoner by John Williams (June 2020)
Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck (May 2020)
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin (April 2020)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (March 2020)
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (February 2020)
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (January 2020)
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (December 2019)
Contact by Carl Sagan (November 2019)
Different Seasons (collection of 4 short stories) by Stephen King (October 2019)
Beloved by Toni Morrison (September 2019)
Books written by Canadian authors
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (August 2019)
Player One by Douglas Coupland (July 2019)
Do not say we have nothing by Madeleine Thien (June 2019)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (May 2019)
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (April 2019)
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (March 2019)
The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy (February 2019)
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (December 2018)
A selection of books written in a foreign language and translated into English
The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque (translated from German)
The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho (translated from Portuguese)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (translated from Czech)
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (translated from Japanese)
Paula by Isabel Allende (translated from Spanish)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary (translated from French)
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (translated from Russian)
Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (translated from Spanish)
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (translated from German)
Our original selection of books (2 per Group member)
A Place called Winter by Patrick Gale
The 100-year-old man who climbed out the window and disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Where my Heart used to beat by Sebastian Faulks
Bad Blood by Lorna Sage
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury