Three Book Clubs

I feel quite proud of myself. I managed to go to three book clubs in the space of a week. I dare say that's quite impressive. The college one on Wednesday I nearly didn't go to, even though I actually read the book. There was supposed to be film club, and they were meant to be showing The Hurt Locker which looks completely like my type of film, so I was going to go to that instead. Thankfully, it got postponed til this week.

Anyway, on Wednesday I went to the college book club, and we discussed A Thousand Splendid Suns. To be honest, I much preferred A Thousand Suns (somewhat different genre) and didn't particularly enjoy the book we were reading. I was the only one who thought that the book wasn't that great. Everyone else was rather taken with it. Perhaps there wasn't as much of a shock factor for me as for others as I've read a similar themed book in the past so I was aware that things like that do happen. However, a fuller discussion of the book to follow...

Friday night was the History Reader's Group in Chorley that I attend. Fantastic fun, and a fascinating topic even though I hadn't read either of the books I'd taken on the topic. I tried to read one, but the way it was written, the rather patronising tone, the failure to deliver on the promised 'fair amount of scandal, sex and booze' and political intrigue, combined with the fact that the same paragraph was repeated at least three or four times, and a number of other ones repeated in each chapter, made me give up on it. The other was by the same author, so I didn't bother. If you're gonna write books that are allegedly popular history, you could at least make them interesting and read the whole thing through rather than just editing it one chapter at a time. I assume that's what was done, either that or the author was being paid per page and decided a copy and paste job would be perfectly adequate for a non-specialist audience.

Saturday afternoon was the Teenage Bookclub at the Harris. I might as well have not bothered almost, as we hardly talked about books at all and it was a bit rubbish to be honest. However, I did get some great feedback from one of the members on one of my books which I'd emailed him, which was handy. It basically confirmed what I thought already: nameably: it's on the short side and there's no real proper plot structure that goes through the whole novel. It's basically a collection of short stories--not surprising as that's what it started out as.

So yeh, three bookclubs in a week. And I am way way way behind with writing book reviews too. I seem to be doing a lot of reading at the moment and not a lot of reviewing... I'll try and catch up.