Thursday, October 27, 2005

Recommended Reading

Dear dragontree book clubbers,

It would be nice if we all suggested books that we have enjoyed reading but because we've read them they will not be chosen for our book club meetings. This would be good for those times you feel uninspired to choose new books!!

Please contribute!!!

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

From amazon:
'From Publishers Weekly - Ruiz Zafón's novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault's Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels. As he grows up, Daniel's fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a "porcelain gaze," Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend's sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Officially, Carax's dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax's childhood friend. As Daniel's quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax's begin to emerge. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is "God's dandruff"; servants obey orders with "the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects"). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.'

Other titles put up for voting by Christie:
- 'The island of Dr. Moreau' by H.G. Wells
- 'A blade of grass' by Lewis DeSoto
- 'On the black hill' by Bruce Chatwin

Provisional date for the next book club meeting is the 2nd of November (Wed).


The overall score for this book was 6.4/10 (within 6 votes)!!
Individual scores (AS: 5; SM: 6; CE: 7.5; CP: 6; RB: 7 and KL:7)

Island - Aldous Huxley


From Harper Academic.com:
'In Island, his last novel, Huxley transports us to a Pacific island where, for 120 years, an ideal society has flourished. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala and events begin to move when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and -- to his amazement -- give him hope.'

Other titles put up for voting by Sonia:
- 'The New-York trilogy' by Paul Auster
- 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' by Oliver Sacks
- 'Hymalaya' by Michael Palin
- 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov

This book club meeting was held at the king and Queen and we went to Fitzrovia once more!!
Comments are welcome!!

The overall score for this book was 3.7/10 (within 4 votes)!!
Individual scores were: RB: 3; SM: 4; AS: 4 and CE: 4


The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger



Our second meeting was held on the 21st of July. We started at the King and Queen and ended up in Fitzrovia!!

Synopsis from Amazon:
'From Publishers Weekly - This clever and inventive tale works on three levels: as an intriguing science fiction concept, a realistic character study and a touching love story. Henry De Tamble is a Chicago librarian with "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears without warning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance in his life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met his wife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she'd known him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his 40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time travelling to Clare's childhood and meeting her as a six-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's points of view, and so does the narration. Reed ably expresses the longing of the one always left behind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love for Henry. Likewise, Burns evokes the fear of a man who never knows where or when he'll turn up, and his gratitude at having Clare, whose love is his anchor. The expressive, evocative performances of both actors convey the protagonists' intense relationship, their personal quirks and their reminiscences, making this a fascinating audio.'

Please comment!!

This book was put up for selection by Kevin
The overall score for this book was 6.7/10 (within 5 readers)!!
Individual scores were: CE: 7; AS: 6; SM: 5.5; RB: 8 and KL: 7

When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro


Synopsis from Reading Group Guides.com:

'From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination.
Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.
Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.'


The other books put up for voting by Ruth were:
- 'The bookseller of Kabul' by Asne Seierstad
- 'The red tent' by Anita Diamant
- 'The line of beauty' by Alan Hollinghurst

The first book club meeting was held in Kevin's and Ruth's place at the beginning of June (8th??). Please comment on this book.


The overall score for this book was 4.8/10 (within 5 readers)!!
Individual scores: CP: 4; AS: 2; CE: 6; RB: 7 and KL: 5

Dragontree


Hello fellow book clubers! Yesterday, I was chatting to Christie and we came up with the idea of creating a blog for our book club. As you can imagine deciding on a name would be a difficult task and putting it up for voting seemed even more daunting! Hope you do not mind with the choice! The inspiration came from Christie's dragon tree that she keeps in the office. We can see it as a poetic influence for our book club. Anyway, I have volunteered myself (son :)!!) for creating this blog and keep it running for us. I will post the previous books we have read but we can all post comments on them, give an overview, general ratings, whatever we feal like writing!
Welcome to the 'DRAGONTREE'!!