How many is too many?

Now we are eight ,would nine be too many? Do we have nine pint glasses , can the discussion thrive with this number or is it just aversion to change?

Next month What Sport Tells Us about Life : Ed Smith
then Candide

Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man -- Siegfried Sassoon

A captivating description of pre First World War hunting, country life and gentility .The country-side, the people an idle life and then... the War .
Not a life-changing book but a lovely read .

Welcome C ; a trans Atlantic visitor.

Welcome Bloke R...

New blood has joined the band of blokes and yesterday offered insightful commentary on Frankenstein, having only glanced at the text in boyhood... I hate that. I write this from my sick bed the day after the Bookblokes monthly bash having drunk a single bottle of beer (plus poisonous sediment) and paid the price with a trip to the khazi every ten minutes during the night. (Note to self - * don't drink the lumpy stuff - better still, pour carefully into a glass like the instructions say* )
More new blood to arrive next month... Bloke R - send email address for an invite to comment.

editors note: O-Garden from Otley Brewery is a wheat beer flavoured with coriander and orange peel . Also available was Cheltenham SPA form Battledown Brewery in Cheltneham and Ale Mary from West Hewish and Old Scatness from Shetland

How exciting this all is.

Frankenstein -- Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was an unexpected treat . Not too long and a step into a different world - not sci-fi but the world of the early 1800s (published 1818) . Cleverly no attempt to explain the "scientific " details of the monster's creation. Victor F the scientist is a most unsympathetic character .

Beer from the Shetlands and Hampshire drank well


Next: Siegfried Sassoon "Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man"

Books are alway better in the group

It is almost alway the case that having discussed a book we see more in it than any of us did when we first read it .

Discussing it -in our unstructured way us helps to consider the style , content ,authorial voice ,plot and setting , historical or social significance of the work



You don't need the awful "Questions for your reading group... why do you think the sky was blue ...what is the meaning of Ermintrude wearing a red dress ..." .



We read differently-some skim and take a sense of the book , some read and consider every word . Some don't finish ( or even start ) the book. As we talk about it we come to see the book differently from how we did at first .... but perhaps it's just the beer.

all the books

So bloke T has put up the list of all we have read - at least those we can recall
Quite a variety .Some we would never have read were it not for the group .
Click on the list to see them - and wonder at the range .