Ripon & District

Book Readers Group

Welcome to the Book Readers Group. We are a lively and (we like to think!) interesting group who meet on the 2nd Thursday of each month.

March 2024
This month's book was 'The Midnight Library' by Matt Haig. The novel focuses on the life, or rather many lives of the main character - a woman in her early thirties called Nora. She is quite unhappy with her life, having lost both her parents, fallen out with her brother and chosen to break off her most recent love affair when she finds herself in a magical 'Library.' Mrs Elms, the librarian tells her that all the books are just simply different versions of Nora's life and she could try out as many as she needed to. Nora proceeds to become an Olympic swimmer, a famous musician, an expert on glaciers as well as a happy wife and Mother. In each of these alternative lives there are some drawbacks and in the end Nora realises that her original life is the best one and returns to it - determined to make the best of it. The book was loved and hated equally by our members and provoked interesting discussion as well as comparisons to the marvellous film - 'oh What a Wonderful Life.'

February 2024
The book we discussed was 'One Good Turn' by Kate Atkinson, and was led by Helen. It is set at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and people queuing for a lunchtime show witness what appears to be a totally random road-rage incident - a near homicidal attack which sparks off a series of inter-connected stories involving the characters who witness it. Each story contains a kernel of the next, like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls and the final line brings things full circle.
Most of us enjoyed reading it although one comment was that the mish-mash of characters made it hard to remember who was who and that it needed an uninterrupted read as otherwise you lost the plot! Those who had read other novels by the same author felt that it compared unfavourably with them. However improbable the plot was, it was cleverly written and very amusing.

January 2024
The New Year brought us 'Bournville' by Johnathan Coe.
In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.

As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?
The group enjoyed reading the book as it had references to events in British history that we all could relate to and reflect upon.

For December 2023 we chose a seasonal book, 'The Advent Calendar' by Steven Croft. A young girl called Alice was given a magical advent calendar and each day both Alice and her Uncle Sam received a code on their mobile phone which opened one of the doors on the calendar. Alice and Sam were then wooshed into another world - one that lay behind the door of the calendar. They met guides - different ones for each week of advent - who led them through some exciting and informative adventures. The individual stories - 24 of them in total were linked to paragraphs in the Bible.
Some people enjoyed the seasonal atmosphere of the novel whilst others felt they were being morally preached at. However, everyone agreed the front cover of the book was attractive!

The November 2023 meeting was a different format to our usual discussion of one book read by all. Instead we all read one book of our own choice. We then presented to the group a short summary of our novel highlighting some of the key features without giving the game away. The books became a plan for 2024!

In October 2023 our book for discussion was 'Frenchman's Creek' by Daphne du Maurier.
Dona, Lady St. Columb, makes a sudden visit with her children to Navron, her husband's remote estate in Cornwall, in a fit of disgust with her shallow life in London court society. There she finds that the property, unoccupied for several years, is being used as a base by a notorious French pirate who has been terrorising the Cornish coast. Dona finds that the pirate, Jean-Benoit Aubéry, is not a desperate character at all, but rather a more educated and cultured man than her own doltish husband, and they fall in love.

Dona dresses as a boy and joins the pirate crew on an expedition to cut out and capture a richly laden merchant ship belonging to one of her neighbours. The attack is a success, but the news of it brings Dona's husband Harry and his friend Rockingham to Cornwall, disrupting her idyllic romance. Harry, Rockingham, and the other locals meet at Navron to plot how to capture the pirate, but Aubéry and his crew cleverly manage to capture and rob their would-be captors instead. Rockingham, who has had designs on Dona himself, perceives the relationship between her and Aubéry, and Dona is forced to kill him in self-defence when he attacks her in a jealous rage. Meanwhile, Aubéry is captured while trying to return to his ship, and Dona hatches a plot for his release. This is successful, but in the end she chooses to stay with her husband for the sake of her children, while he returns to his ship.

Our September 2023 book was 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' by Joan Lindsay.
The tale begins at Appleyard College, a private boarding school for upper-class girls near Mount Macedon, Victoria. A picnic is being planned for the students under the supervision of Mrs. Appleyard, the school's headmistress. The picnic entails a day trip to Hanging Rock, on St. Valentine's Day in 1900. One of the students, Sara, who is in trouble with Mrs. Appleyard, is not allowed to go. Sara's close friend Miranda goes without her. When they arrive, the students relax, and eat lunch. Afterward, Miranda goes to climb the monolith with classmates Edith, Irma, and Marion despite being forbidden to do so. The girls' mathematics teacher, Greta McCraw, follows behind them separately. Miranda, Marion, and Irma climb still higher in a trance-like state while Edith flees in terror; she returns to the picnic in hysterics, disoriented and with no memory of what occurred. Miss McCraw is also nowhere to be accounted for except for being seen by Edith who passed her ascending the rock in her underwear. The school scours the rock in search of the three girls and their teacher, but they are not found.

Old Order
Our December 2022 book was 'Klara and the Sun' by Kazuo Ishiguro.
The book was enjoyed by most if not all members present and was described as thought-provoking and different.
A main feature of the book was the notion of Artificial Intelligence [the AF being an artificial friend] and this aspect attracted much debate over the place of robots in modern society. It was acknowledged that it is generally advantageous to use robots in the workplace - for example in hospitals to speed up the rate of operations conducted in any given period of time but that artificial intelligence could not replace people on a more personal level.
There was also quite a lot of discussion around another main theme - that of children being 'lifted' [genetic modification] and the possibilities of genetic modification being even broader, better and safer in the non-too distant future.

Songbirds by Christy Lefteri was our January 2023 choice.
When her husband dies and Nisha is unable to support her beloved daughter, she is forced to make the heartbreaking decision to leave her home in Sri Lanka and try to find work in Cyprus.
Her daughter is left behind with Nisha’s mother as she finds a job as a domestic worker. Nisha sends money back home to her family and her only contact with her daughter is through nightly video calls.
Nisha has worked for Petra for nine years. She cooks and cleans and cares for Petra’s daughter. Then one night Nisha vanishes. Petra realises she knows very little about the woman who has lived in her home for almost a decade. She knows nothing of Nisha’s dreams and fears.
Yiannis is Nisha’s secret lover and a man, who despite his flaws, wants to offer Nisha everything she’s dreamed of. He, too, is puzzled by Nisha’s disappearance. Both he and Petra know she would never just up and leave and they both team up to try and uncover the truth about what happened to Nisha.

During February 2023 we read 'Queen of the Desert' by Georgina Howell. The sub-title of the book is a good clue as to its contents - The Extraordinary :Life of Gertrude Bell.' This biography tells of the exciting and sometimes tragic life of a very talented and courageous young lady who started life in County Durham, Northern England. Born in 1868 to a wealthy family, Gertrude was well educated and studied History at Oxford. It was also the family's wealth that funded her explorations into the Alps and into the Middle east.
It was in the Alps that Gertrude scaled many mountains including Mont Blanc and founded new routes in the Bernese Oberland.
However, it was for her extensive travels and mapping of the Middle East that she became highly admired and an important diplomatic role ensued. Having learnt to speak fluent Arabic, Syrian and Turkish as well as French, German and Italian she was well placed to communicate effectively with both leaders and tribes people.
The Readers group were full of admiration for this multi-talented woman and most thoroughly enjoyed reading about her adventured.

Our March 2023 book was 'The It Girl.' by Ruth Ware.
April Coutts-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. April was from a very privileged background and was the ultimate It girl. However, by the end of the second term, April was dead - shockingly murdered!
The story moves to a decade later, when Hannah and her husband Will are expecting their first child. The man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison, but new evidence that Neville may have been innocent comes to light. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide… including a murder.
Interwoven into this murder mystery are some dark themes such as coercive partners, inappropriate behaviours and
imposter syndrome. Everyone in the group said they had enjoyed the book and everyone was surprised when the culprit was revealed!

'When I Came Home Again' by Caroline Scott was our book for April's meeting. The author specialises and has extensively researched the effects the first world war had on women in Britain. This book draws on this knowledge and the novel is based a true story from that period.
It begins with a man being arrested for graffiti in Durham Cathedral and it soon becomes apparent that he has suffered a trauma from his experiences in the war and has completely lost his memory. He has no idea who he is and where he came from originally, so he is sent to a rehabilitation centre and given the name Adam. His Doctor hopes to fix this broken man and a strong bond is formed.
After two years, the Doctor placed an advert in a national newspaper asking for anyone who might know Adam to come forward. Over a hundred people claim Adam is a long lost relative. After many interviews there remains just three women who might have known Adam prior to the war. One is convinced Adam is her brother, the second truly believes Adam is her son and the third lady says Adam is her husband. The story of these women forms the next section of the book with the novel culminating in a gripping final section.
Every single member of the Book Readers Group had really enjoyed this period story and described it as heart rendering and thought provoking.

In May 2023 we read and discussed 'The Crowthers of Bankdam' by Thomas Armstrong. It is a 1940 historical novel, a family saga following the fortunes of the Crowther family of Yorkshire mill owners across several generations from 1854 when Simeon Crowther was Master of the Bankdam mills. His two sons were as different as chalk from cheese; Zebediah was described as a 'slimy toad' whereas Joshua had a Yorkshire sense of humour and a youthful quality of spirit. The divergence between the two men marks the beginning of the feud that so nearly brought Bankdam to ruin.

The book is split into 3 parts, the first describing the rise of the Crowther dynasty and by the end of which all the characters are clearly defined, leading smoothly into Part 2 when the family is prospering and ends with Zebediah's death. Part 3 covers 1908 to 1921 and all the issues with the First World War.

There are vivid comparisons between the descriptions of the Yorkshire countryside and the industrial scenes and the background to the woollen industry is fascinating. The Yorkshire dialect is very accurately portrayed - a bit bewildering to anyone who is not a native!

The book selected for our June 2023 discussion was 'Once Upon A River' by Diane Setterfield.
It opens with an injured man entering the bar of the Swan Inn, an traditional public house in the small town of Radcot situated along the Thames — carrying a young girl, who appears to be deceased. The body is brought to the hospital to be inspected, but then a miracle happens and the young girl mysteriously reawakens.

The exposition develops with the main focus being three families — the Vaughans, the Armstrongs and Lilly White and her brother — who have each lost a young girl. When the story of the miracle involving a young girl at the Swan Inn begins to make it way from town to town, each of these families hope that this young girl is their own.

The story explores each of the claims on the young girl, the motivations and histories of these claimants, and many the townspeople who are drawn to the young girl and the mystery behind her apparent miracle.

Once the scene is set, the story starts to take shape in a way that sparks interest and curiosity.
One last thing to note is that an interesting aspect of the story is that the settings and locations in Setterfield’s novel are largely real places — the towns, the churches and manors.

Our July 2023 mread was 'The Herd' by Emily Edwards.
The story opens in December 2019, before most of us had even heard of Covid or realised that whether or not we should be vaccinated would come to be a major issue. We're in Farley County Court, where Elizabeth and Jack Chamberlain are facing Bryony and Ash Kohli. As they were best friends until just a few months ago we know that whatever has happened is major and that, regardless of the outcome, this is not going to work out well for anyone.

Winding back to July 2019. Both families live in Saints Road and the Kohlis moved there from London to be in a better area and close to their friends. The families do live in each others' pockets - godparents to each others' children and working almost like an extended family. The Chamberlains have three children. Max and Charlie are healthy and living well, but six-year-old Clemmie had seizures as a child and Elizabeth is protective of her health because it would be too risky to vaccinate her against the common childhood illnesses. Elizabeth is evangelical about vaccinations: everyone else should be jabbed to protect her child.

It's never really come up in discussions between Bry and Elizabeth, mainly because Elizabeth assumes that four-year-old Alba has been vaccinated but Bry has compelling reasons to fear vaccinations. Her brother, Matty, only in his forties, is in care because of autism which manifested itself when he had his MMR jab as a child. Bry's been brought up by a mother who is vitriolic about the problems which vaccines cause. In fairness to vaccines, it does seem that, in Sarah's world, any illness that anyone who has ever been vaccinated develops can be traced back to that vaccination.

None of what happened was deliberate. They were all people under pressure, be it money, work or just trying to live a reasonable life. Elizabeth made an assumption based on a rather short response from Bry, that Alba was fully vaccinated, including the MMR jab, when she was not. The measles outbreak caught both families and for one of them, the consequences would be devastating.

There are some interesting insights into difficult decisions made by parents and how post natal depression can have an impact on decision making. There are some surprising twists and turns making it an exciting read.
The story provoked a lively debate about vaccination and parenthood!

For August 2023, our selected book was English Pastoral by James Rebanks. This factual tale of farming life provoked a ively discussion about the difficulties of farming due to the landscape, the weather, economies of scale as well as Government policies! Many of us felt that Farmers are under-valued for the essential work they do and that feeding the nation should be a priority with a view to food independence in the future. The session evolved into debates about climate change and eating habits as many readers made the links between all three areas.
The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm.

As a boy, James Rebanks's grandfather taught him to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, it was barely recognisable. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song.

English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. And yet this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future.

This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against all the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.

More Group Pages
Art Appreciation Group Badminton Bonsai Book Readers Group
Circle Dancing Classic Drama group Collectables Conversational Spanish
Craft Group Creative Writing Forum Culture Club Family History
French Conversation Garden Group Geology German Conversation
Have Your Say History Italian Conversation Keep Fit `move it or lose it`
Latin Latin Music Calle Oche Lawn Bowls Local History
Painting and Drawing Pétanque Photography Piano Playing
Play Folk Music Play Reading For Pleasure Playing the Guitar Poetry for Pleasure
Ripon Archaeology Research Science For All Scrabble Scribblers
Singing for Fun Spanish Intermediate Sunday Lunch Group Table Tennis
Tennis The Russian Themed Book Group Theatre Visits Group Ukulele
Visiting Buildings of Interest Walking Walking Netball Wednesday Lunch Group
Wine Appreciation
More Group Pages
Art Appreciation Group Badminton
Bonsai Book Readers Group
Circle Dancing Classic Drama group
Collectables Conversational Spanish
Craft Group Creative Writing Forum
Culture Club Family History
French Conversation Garden Group
Geology German Conversation
Have Your Say History
Italian Conversation Keep Fit `move it or lose it`
Latin Latin Music Calle Oche
Lawn Bowls Local History
Painting and Drawing Pétanque
Photography Piano Playing
Play Folk Music Play Reading For Pleasure
Playing the Guitar Poetry for Pleasure
Ripon Archaeology Research Science For All
Scrabble Scribblers
Singing for Fun Spanish Intermediate
Sunday Lunch Group Table Tennis
Tennis The Russian Themed Book Group
Theatre Visits Group Ukulele
Visiting Buildings of Interest Walking
Walking Netball Wednesday Lunch Group
Wine Appreciation