Getting together, reading together

Rosina Emmet Sherwood
Girl Reading,1888
Photo credit:freeparking

Here's the  group activity from the conference that we didn't have time to do:

Find someone who… has finished War and Peace

Find someone who… can recite a piece of poetry

Find someone who… has read all the works by one author (e.g. everything by Dickens)

Find someone who… has been in a book club before

Find someone who… has read a James Bond novel

Find someone who… has bought a book but never opened it

Find someone who… has read Fifty Shades of Grey

Find someone who… hasn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey

Find someone who… can remember immediately whether they have read a book or not

Find someone who… reads different books at the same time (e.g. one book on the Metro, one book at home)

Find someone who… likes audio books

Find someone who… never sees the film before reading the book

Here's the handout:

BOOK GROUP

 FIRST MEETING IDEAS

·      Favourite Book: all members have two pieces of paper – one with their names and one with the title of their favourite book. Then all names and titles are displayed and everyone tries to guess and match up the books to the members.

·      Find a Member: give all members a list of criteria and they will have to find a name to fit into each category. For example, “Find a member who has finished War and Peace”, “Find a member who has been in a book club before” or “Find a member who can recite a poem”.

·      Have a book-free meeting, on special occasions like Valentines or Halloween.

·      Ask members to come with alternative endings – even try writing them and reading them out loud.

·      Create your own literary awards and ask members to vote for their best reads, favourite authors, etc.

   All ideas from www.thereadingclub.co.uk

GENERIC TOPICS AND QUESTIONS

     How did your feelings change as you read or listened to the              narrative?Did it make you angry, frightened, laugh, or cry?

       Which relationship was most interesting and why?

      

       Did you get off to a slow start or were you hooked straight away?

    

      What did you think of the ending? Was it what you expected?

    

     If you've read a true story, biography or autobiography, did you think it was well told? Did you find out more or less than you wanted about the subject? Have you changed your opinion of them now you've read their story?

     Who was your favourite / least favourite character? Were there any  characters you could identify with?

      Did you find some parts of the story more enjoyable than others?

        If the story was set in another time or    country, how did that        affect you? Was it    convincing?   Would you want to live in that      time or   travel to that country / place?

      Is this a book you would recommend and, if    so, why? Would you read another title by this  author?

     Did you skip the boring bits or just read the end? If you gave up on the book, can you say why?

     If it was made into a film / TV series, which actors would play the main parts?

Did it remind you of any other books you have  read? Can you think of any other   stories with similar ideas, characters or settings?

     Questions from www.readinggroups.org

       USEFUL SITES

FOR

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

https://www.goodreads.com/

  

http://www.bookclubgirl.com/

http://www.litlovers.com/  Includes guides and book club resources

http://bookclubclassics.com/Blog/best-books-for-book-clubs/  Some great book guides

http://bookpage.com  Type ‘book club’ into the blog search engine for inspiration

https://www.englishclub.com/reading/recommended/index.htm  Recommendations for English learners and teachers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003jhsk    “World Book Club invites the globe’s greatest authors to discuss their best known novels”  listen to discussions and dramatizations

http://successfulenglish.com/2013/01/good-reads-for-intermediate-english-learners/  Some recommendations for Young Adult Learners

http://readers.penguin.co.uk/  Penguin’s Book group page, including advice about setting up a group

http://readinggroups.org/  A site for reading groups including reviews and advice

http://www.bookgroup.info/041205/index.php   A site for reading groups, you can even add your group to the list!

http://www.readinggroupguides.com  Good resource for guides

http://www.thereadingclub.co.uk All about starting up a reading group

http://www.openingthebook.com/whichbook/  Great resource for choosing something to read. Take a look at the blog too

LITERATURE AVAILABLE

Start a Book Swap List – everybody provides a list of 5 or 10 books they are willing to swap to pool resources.

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/britlit

A variety of short stories and poetry suitable for primary and secondary school students. Some of the work is original and some packs provide resources for stories well known for the film version, such as Billy Elliot and Bend It Like Beckham.

http://www.gutenberg.org/  Over 45,000 free books.  Good for the classics

http://www.readanybook.com/

Remember, if you're interested in setting up a book group please get in touch! I can help with practicalities and help spread the word.

When's your next meeting???

Summer Reading

The Saturday Readers are an enthusiastic bunch, eager to keep up the good work and so we met to discuss some possible summer reading options.

What did they fancy? Romance? Mystery? History? Thrillers? Comedy?

After some discussion and review reading we chose The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion for July and A Commonplace Killing by Sian Busby to see us through August and September.

Here and here are reviews of The Rosie Project.

This is Graeme Simsion's webpage.

Here and here are reviews of A Commonplace Killing.

This is a link to an article about the author and how her husband wrote up the novel after her death.

Here is an obituary for her.


Options that didn't make the final choice were:


Longbourne by Jo Baker


The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult


The Hive by Gill Hornby


A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks


The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier


The Queen and I by Sue Townsend

BBC Adaptation

Having seen the trailers to the BBC adaptation of Restless, last night I decided to watch Part One. The BBC are well known for their slavish attention to detail and authenticity in period dramas and in this respect Restless is no different. I did read on Wikipedia that they made some mistakes in using the correct period cars. As I'm not an expert on vintage cars I didn't even notice, they all looked authentic enough to me.

What did bother me was the brutal editing of Ruth's personal story, set in 1976. This isn't the first adaptation in which the BBC sacrifice a modern day story to concentrate on a historically based plot. Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong and Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale are two recent examples. In Birdsong nothing remains of Elizabeth and how she discovers her grandfather's, (Stephan Wraysford) story. If you haven't read the book then the television version is  lush with detail and costume, thoroughly enjoyable and exclusively set before and during World War One. We miss out on the wonderful, uncompromising Elizabeth and her equally complicated personal life. Despite the luxurious production and amazingly good-looking Eddie Redmayne it was a huge disappointment to me.

Anyway, for reasons of fairness here is the trailer 

Here is a review of the first episode. And here is another.

Read, watch and reach your own conclusions.

Like Restless, The Thirteenth Tale is not entirely devoid of its modern day setting but again it has been pared down to the bare minimum. Yet another main female character who has been reduced to something necessary in order to tease forth the apparently far more interesting and important revelations from the past. Granted, we do get more of a sense of Margaret's personal history, but yet again, much is lost.

Watch this scary trailer

 

Here's another taster

Here is a review of the adaptation.

Here is an interview with the author, Diane Setterfield.

What is it with the BBC?  Why do they do this? Is it budget  that makes them cut out so many meaningful secondary characters? Ok, admittedly in Restless this doesn't happen in the parts set in World War 2, and we even get to meet, briefly, Kolia. Do they think that the modern viewer can't cope with so many personalities or that we haven't got the attention span to watch anything that lasts longer than 2 episodes? Perhaps it is just my own particular bee in my bonnet which makes me think this. Whatever the reason, it seems telling that in each case it is the story of a main female character which is lost or compromised. I realise that William Boyd wrote the screenplay for Restless and I know he changed various things to make it 'work for telly'. I must go back and watch the interview in which he discusses this in order to see if he mentions any reasons. I must also watch Part Two of the adaptation, perhaps I'm wrong and all the secondary characters from the 1976 era will suddenly appear...

A Real Page Turner

 Now we have got past the hurdle of so many names and acronyms, the Saturday Readers are now completely engrossed in the two stories of Restless and seem to have spent sleepless nights trying to work out how the two might be linked. Some of us are biting our tongues in order not to spoil the surprise(s) whilst others are enthralled by various theories involving, among other things, the identity of Ruth's father. The only solution is to carry on reading. Perhaps we should also heed Romer's first rule: trust no one. Especially the author.

On both occasions that we have met to discuss Restless, we've commented on the sang froid of Eva, and also of Ruth. We agreed that mother and daughter are undeniably similar in the way that they deal with their emotions and personal relationships. There is one obvious contrast however. Eva / Sally is able to effortlessly manipulate those around her, even her own daughter whilst Ruth seems incapable of such machinations. Obviously Eva had her training both theoretical and practical to hone these skills whilst Ruth has simply had her life experiences. One wonders how good a spy Ruth would have become, given the appropriate training. Towards the end of the novel we see this possibility played out,  a certain paranoia seems to have taken over her.Her suspicions of Hamid's friends, her  misjudgement  of Hamid himself, her drunken declaration of Frobisher's invitation with the police to collaborate.

'Because you can tell me, Hamid,' I said, softly, leaning closer. 'I'm going to be working with the police, you see, they want me to help them. You can tell me.'


Does Ruth also want a piece of the action, or are her suspicions simply an extension of her mother's, and a result of her manipulation? We discussed the reasons why Sal  insists on giving Ruth her story in episodes. As a literary device used by the author, it serves the double purpose of creating cliffhanger situations for both Ruth as a character and us the reader. For Ruth this is complicated. Is she reading the truth of the mother she thought she knew, or is it the delusions of an elderly woman? As readers, free of Ruth's responsibilities, we can sit back and enjoy, for Ruth it is  bewildering, frightening. She tells  her friend Veronica about her mother's revelations.

'The act of telling it would make the new facts in my life more real for me - easier to confront ... I needed one extra-familial buttress to hold me steady.' 

Veronica, a nurse, questions Ruth on her mother's bizarre behaviour,but can draw no conclusions.

'But otherwise she seems perfectly normal?'

'Define "normal",' I said.'

Once again we commented on the earth-shattering nature of Sal's bombshell.  Various book group discussion lists contain the same question in relation to Restless:

How well do we truly know someone? 

Here's William Boyd talking about being a traitor, not knowing your parents, the setting of Middle Ashton and plenty more.  


  

Some Links

Here are some links to interviews, trailers and reviews relating to Restless.

Let's start off with some interviews with the author, William Boyd.

 

Here he is talking about British spies in the USA, and about how we are all restless, spy or not.

 

And here about his childhood and his writing habits.

And here, more about his writing habits and why he keeps his manuscripts in the fridge

This is about adapting the novel for television and how he changed and invented events in order to create a successful adaptation.

Finally here are the trailers for the BBC adaptation of Restless

Episode 1

Episode 2

Here is a Guardian review of the novel and here is a Telegraph review of the adaptation. Notice there are some further links in the Telegraph review.