Adventures In Literature - 2023
Members Choose their ‘Book of the Year 2023’
Margaret chose ‘Unlawful Killing’ by Wendy Joseph.
Sharon’s choice was ‘Queen Anne’, a biography by Judy Barker about Anne Somerset. Sharon loved this book about an unfortunate monarch, who was pregnant 18 times; only 3 survived birth but didn’t live. There is a variety of diagnoses as what might have been the problem but the eating and drinking couldn’t have helped. She was born in 1665 but did not come to the throne until 1702 and died in 1714.
Alison’s book was 'The President’s Hat' (Le Chapeau de Mitterrand) by Antoine Laurain
Jim’s Book of 2023 was Anthony Doerr’s, Cloud Cuckoo Land, 2021, historical and speculative fiction novel by the Pulitzer-prize winning author. Story of 5 characters spanning 8 centuries.
Chris’s Book of the Year was, ‘Crying in H Mart’ by Michelle Zauner. For a full review click the link.
12th June 'Fantasy
Anne
Read Terry Pratchett's, 'Raising Steam', 2013. The 40th 'Discworld' novel & his penultimate novel before his death in 2015. Dicworld is the alternative universe. Several members of our group but not Chris (yet?) have enjoyed Pratchett's gentle satire and fantastical stories which were extremely popular and often topped best-seller lists.
Jim
Has read J.R.R. Tolkien's, 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy 3 times to his children and had to read it again! Jim also enjoyed Philip Pulman's series, 'His Dark Materials'. This time he read 'Cloud Cuckoo Land', 2021, by Anthony Doerr ('All the Light We Cannot See' - a group favourite). This is completely different. Spanning 8 centuries about the preservation of Ancient Greek book preserved by different children down the ages. Sounds amazing!
Margaret
is a fantasy fan and read 'Mareta, Dragon Lady of Peru', by Anne McCaffrey. A research ship from Earth sets off to find habitable planets for future colonies. The one they land on has strange life forms such as genetically modified dragons...
Chris
Was lent a copy of 'The Little Prince' by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 1943. A very strange children's story that Chris imagines might be too silly for today's older children and somewhat esoteric for younger ones. I guess it's an allegory about the human condition. It begins with an aviator crash landing on a small planet and being discovered by the prince, who starts asking the aviator questions and telling him how he came to be there. Not my thing really. Saint-Exupery was a writer, poet and pioneering aviator who did actually crash land in a desert and survive. His books are standard reading for French schoolchildren apparently.
15th May 'War Novels'
Alison
'The Flame Tree", Siobhan Daiko 2022. Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. A little known true story. Recommended
Sharon
'HMS Ulysses', 1955, the first novel of Alistair McClean. About a ship escorting the Russian fleet facing terrible battles and conditions. Sharon read this when she was 16 and recalls it fondly.
Margaret
'For Whom the Bell Tolls', Ernest Hemingway's novel set during the Spanish civil war.
Christine
Re-read 'Slaughterhouse 5', Kurt Vonnegut's satyrical novel based on his incarceration in an underground slaughterhouse during the fire bombing of Dresden in 1945
Jim
Enjoyed 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy 1865-9 & 'The Romantic' by William Boyd.
Chris
Read 'The Convert', by Stefan Hertmans, 2016. An intriguing recommendation by a friend, this fictional account of true events, set at the start of the first crusade (1096–1099). A young woman, Vigdis, is born to an aristocratic Norman (who were originally Vikings) falls in love with David, the son of the Chief Rabbi in the Jewish Quarter. Their only recourse is to escape as Vigdis' father, a Roman Catholic, will forbid their union. With the help of Jewish contacts they flee across Europe. The author has researched this from manuscripts, stories and fragments and even finds evidence that Vigdis reached as far as Cairo. I didn't realise how awful and brutal the Crusaders were, not to mention the rag-tag army of peasants and camp followers that rampaged across Europe to Jerusalem with the Pope's blessing. Recommended.
17th April 'Mysticism’
Chris was indisposed for this meeting.
Sharon
I read 'The Alchemist' by Paul Coelho who is a Brazilian and so it was translated from Portuguese. It was written in 1988.
The story concerns a Spanish shepherd boy who has a vision in a church that he must follow his Personal Legend and go to the Pyramids of Egypt where he will find it. This vision is confirmed by a Gypsy woman and also by a mysterious man who turns out to be a king. He tells the boy to follow the omens and gives him two gem stones of different colours, one for yes and one for no. He must read the signs.
He sells his sheep and uses the money for the journey. He goes to Tangier's and gets robbed so has to find a job. Lesson one, don't be so trusting. He works for a crystal glass seller and proves to be a bit of an entrepreneur and is rewarded with enough money to continue his journey. He meets an Englishman who tells him he is going to join a caravan across the desert to find an Alchemist to learn how to make gold. That's his Personal Legend. The boy buys a camel and they head off to an oasis with the caravan. He gains the trust of the Arabs by predicting they will be attacked by waring tribesmen at the oasis. He meets Fatima and falls in love with her but asks her to wait until he finishes his Personal Legend. He meets a man who turns out to be the alchemist and continues his journey with him . He is taught to read the desert and be in tune to his heart and listen to it. He parts with the alchemist when he reaches the pyramids. In the sand he sees a scarab beetle so he thinks his treasure is buried where the beetle appeared. He digs but finds nothing. A group of tribesman attack him thinking he has found some money. One of them tells him he also had a vision that there was a treasure buried in the area of Spain the boy came from. Sure enough he returns to the church and digs up a chest full of gold coins. There is a moral somewhere but I couldn't be bothered to work it out, not being into religion and visions. I gave it a three as it's quite short. Believe it or not Will Smith, the actor has bought the film rights although no film is planned yet. I wouldn't put anyone off reading it , it passed the time.
Chris
Before I went into hospital I read several short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, an author I read before for another 'Adventures in Literature' assignment. Lovecraft was was only 17 when he wrote his first story in 1908, 'The Alchemist', which was not published until 1917 in an amateur magazine. It has all the hallmarks of the 'gothic' style invoking the gloom of dark, forbidding towers, a family curse, and the whispered tales of the peasantry in the surrounding forest. The narrator is the last in a long line of French Counts de C-, who all died mysteriously on their 32nd birthday. His own parents die when he is very young and he is left in the care of an old family retainer who himself eventually dies. Before he dies, leaving the boy alone, he reveals the story of the curse. As the day of the young Count's death approaches he discovers a hidden vault in the castle and a passageway leading to a door. Behind the door he finds 'The Alchemist' who, having discovered the elixir of life has continued to murder the Counts de C- for hundreds of years, etc. etc.
I must say I had to force myself to read these stories, though I can see the fascination they must have had for the readers of the pulp fiction that was popular at the time. Lovecraft became more well known after his death and inspired a generation of fantasy writing and comic books. He was particularly well known for 'The Call of Cthulhu', about a fantastic sea monster.
The other stories I read were 'The Temple' supposedly written in a log book by the captain of a First World War German U-Boat captain whose stricken vessel, abandoned by the crew who had gone mad, comes across the lost City of Atlantis. Ridiculous! 'The Vault' is about a wicked, alcoholic undertaker who is so bad at making coffins that he sometimes has to 'adjust' the bodies to fit. One dark night he gets trapped in a vault containing eight coffins, one containing a freshly adjusted corpse. In order to get out he piles up the coffins so he can climb up and escape through a transom. As he is about to wriggle through to freedom his feet slip through the flimsy lid of the topmost coffin and he feels his ankles gripped by claw-like fingers which are tearing at his flesh. He eventually escapes but goes mad. Oops, I gave away the ending!
I tried to find some sort of light reading in the form of an audiobook for whilst I was in hospital and downloaded, 'Poison for Breakfast' by Lemony Snicket. Lemony Snicket, (real name Daniel Handler) as you probably know is the author of a popular series of children's books, 'A series of Unfortunate Events'. 'Poison for Breakfast is different. It is a true story, at least it is compiled from a series of autobiographical events, philosophical musings and quotes from real people. It begins with the author finding a note, apparently pushed under his door, which reads simply, "You had poison for breakfast". He sets off on a quest to see if he can discover the poisoner or the source of the poison. His whimsical approach to research and detection provides an amusing and thought-provoking glimpse into the mind of the author: his pet hates, his favourite things (like swimming in open water), the music he prefers and so on.
The even voice of the reader, the deadpan delivery and style had the intended effect of helping me feel drowsy and I often drifted off.
13th March - ‘Money’
Only 5 of us at the meeting this month. Those of us who have read ‘Money' by Martin Amis did not like it much, especially Jim who emailed his review, and thought it was gross and unpleasant. Kind of the point really, Like American Psycho - I couldn’t watch the film of either.
Sharon read Thomas Wolfe’s, ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ a black comedy, published in the same year as Amis’ book and on a similar topic. Similarly about greed, ambition but also about racial and class tensions about a Wall Street Bond Trader, Sherman McCoy, with a million dollar apartment on Park Avenue who takes a wrong turning off a freeway and ends up in Harlem where he accidentally injures a young black man. Whereupon, the incident snowballs and the trader’s world collapses. Recommended
Anne has begun reading Yanis Varoufakis’, ‘A Brief History of Capitalism: Talking to My Daughter’. Varoufakis is an economist and was briefly a politician, becoming Greek Finance minister in 2015. Unfortunately, due to the corruption and tax avoidance the country was in debt and he failed to reach an agreement with the big boys in the EU (the EC, the ECB and the IMF) about the bailout conditions. (Which largely consisted in austerity measures that would hit the poor the hardest)
Margaret read ’Me Before You’, by Jojo Moyes’ This novel concerned a young man who had money with his family owning a rich successful company. A tragic accident left him a quadriplegic which of course meant he was unable to enjoy his money. He became depressed and rejected carers but a young girl was employed. She was not told that her job was basically ‘suicide watch’. A complex romance, with a compelling theme.
Christine was actually working in the City at the time of the collapse of Barings bank and told us about ’Rogue Trader: How I Brought Down Barings Bank and Shook the Financial World’, a book by Nick Leeson, who served four years in prison for fraud after bankrupting the London-based Barings Bank in 1995 by hiding $1.4 billion in debt he accumulated as a derivatives trader in Singapore. Unfortunately he decided to hide a mistake he made in a deal and tried to continue trading in order to make up the loss. Fortunately, the firm that Christine worked for managed to avoid the worst of the fallout!
Chris read two books, the first, ’Moneyland (How Thieves and Crooks Rule the World & How to Take it Back’ by Oliver Bullough. Published in 2018 - before the fall of Trump and before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it concerns the widespread practice of rich people hiding their money from the tax man in ‘shell accounts’ in places with low, or no, tax, like the Cayman Islands or Jersey. A gripping, fascinating, but ultimately depressing read.
The second book was by one of Chris’ favourite authors, Justin Cartwright called ’Other People’s Money’. This is about a family who owns a small private bank in the city of London, who only accept clients who are very, very rich. Unfortunately, as was the fashion at the time, they became involved in buying what came to be known as ’toxic derivatives’, bundles of debt such as sub-prime mortgages - and the rest is history. With a lively list of characters, and a light, comic approach the novel informs and entertains without being depressing.
13th February 2023 - Immigrants and Immigration
Christine told us about ’Monsieur Linh and his Child’ by Philippe Claudel, 2005. Monsieur Linh is a SE Asian, probably Vietnamese, refugee to France. His son and daughter in law were killed in a war and he flees to France with his granddaughter. One part of the journey is six weeks on a ship. He arrives in Paris where he makes friends with Monsieur Bark, whom he meets on a park bench. Claudel writes sympathetically about his problems and trials of not being able to speak a common language. The book is popular in France and taught in schools. Christine describes it as a small book, big on feelings and compassion, with a hopeful ending.
Sharon told us abut ’The Year of the Runaways’ by Sanjeev Sahota, 2015. Sahota is a young British author and this, his second novel, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. It won the European Union Prize for literature in 2017. Sanjeev writes about the experiences of migrant workers in Britain and in particular Indian refugees whose families have been butchered. Whilst to the government, ‘boat’ people are just a problem of numbers, Sanjeev explores the fate of migrants in Sheffield whose religious principles and ethnic values, such as the caste system clash with British culture. Sharon says it was ‘un-putdownable’.
’The Girl from Aleppo: Nujeen’s Escape from War To Freedom’ by by Nujeen Mustafa and Christina Lamb. Lamb, a prize winning author who also co-authored ‘I Am Malala’ tells the story of a girl with cerebral palsy who lived on the 5th floor of a block in Aleppo with no lift. The book records her heroic journey from Syria to Turkey and then by the smugglers trail to Germany where she had relatives. Here she mixed with a range of refugees. A moving and hopeful story about possibly the greatest human tragedy of our times, the crisis in Syria.
Chris’s choice was ’The Khan’ by Saima Mir, 2021. This novel combines the best elements of a crime thriller, with an exploration of what to the British seems the alien culture of a large immigrant population in a Northern city, probably Bradford. The ‘Khan’ is the ruler, in this case the head of a vast familial empire of Pukhtun (or Pashtun) immigrants, an Iranian ethnic group in the present day Afghanistan or Pakistan. Despite the wealth of the Khan family, and the support they provide, the majority of the extended ‘family’, struggle to maintain a living due to the prejudice of the white population. The Khans have a number of legitimate business but also a very profitable ‘business’ in drugs and prostitution. When the Khan is shot by a rival gang of East European interlopers, the Khan’s daughter Jia, a successful London Lawyer, must step into the breach. Gripping!
January 9th 2023 - Coming of Age
We also discussed our ‘Books of the Year’ see Adventures Books of the Year 2022 and firmed up our monthly choices for the coming year (see below)
Christine read ’Behind The Scenes Art The Museum’ by Kate Atkinson, 1995 which she described as ‘Incredibly moving and funny’. The novel relates the life from conception of Ruby Lennox to 1992 and by interspersing flashbacks with the narrative of Ruby's own life, the book chronicles the lives of six generations of women from Ruby's great-grandmother Alice to Ruby's mother's failed dreams. ****
We use a 5 star system - Chris
Sheryl read ’Ready Player One’ by Ernest Cline, 2011. Set in a a dystopian 2045. Wade Watts lives with his mother in depressing poverty in stacked shipping containers. People live most of their lives playing ‘Oasis’, a virtual reality world. Wade attends school within Oasis. The story is about Wade’s search for an ‘Easter Egg’ hidden in the VR world by the founder of the game company who has since died and left his entire fortune to the winner of the game. ****
’A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’, by Betty Smith, 1943, was Alison’s choice. Set in 1912 and semi-autobiographical it is about a young girl, Francine, age 11 and her brother who is 9. We learn how children played at that time and how Francine goes to the library. The hardy ‘Tree of Heaven’ that flourishes, even in Brooklyn, is a symbol of hope.
Recommended.
Anne’ told us about Bill Bryson’s memoir, ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’, 2006. Bryson was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa and tells of his youth and the middle class, all-American childhood. In his lively imagination, his alter-ego, The Thunderbolt Kid helped him when he felt powerless. A ’quick and easy fun-read’ and a fascinating slice of American culture.
Jim was captivated by, ’Where The Crawdads Sing’, 2018, by Delia Owens, an American Zoologist. Set in the coastal marshlands of N. Carolina. When her abused mother and older siblings leave, six-year-old Catherine Danielle Clark (nicknamed "Kya") is left to her own devices by her alcoholic father. Kya has to fend for herself and grows up learning to cope with life in the swamplands. The novel develops into a coming of age murder mystery. An extremely popular book and recently made into a film. *****
Chris remembered book he had read many years ago called ’Le Grand Meaulnes’. This charming novel, written in 1912 by Henri Alain-Fournier, sometimes translated as ‘The Great Meaulnes’ or ‘The Secret domain’, is one of France’s most read classics. It is only tangentially about ‘coming of age’, that is the transition from childhood to adulthood, since the chief character Augustin Meaulnes, nicknamed both for his height and his qualities as a leader, does not really grow up. He tragically continues to pursue the fairy-tale dream of romantic love, even until the sad ending.
for a more detailed review click here Adventures in Literature - Reviews