100 Names by Cecelia Ahern and Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

January 2013.

Our main title is 100 Names by Cecelia Ahern.
I read this as soon as I could get it from the library - the first person to check it out - the thrill of it!!
It was a bit slow to start, but as I turned the pages the story grew and the pages turned over faster and faster!  And when I reached the final page I realised how much more there was to be told.
A great story of people.  Everyone has a story to be told no matter how innocuous they look, scratch the surface and you will see what is really there - forget about yourself and find the perfect gift!
Overall Opinion: Liz loved it! But others were not so positive
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Our second book for the fast readers was Labyrinth by Kate Mosse.
"When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons during an archaeological dig in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past. But it's not just the sight of the shattered bones that makes her uneasy; there's an overwhelming sense of evil in the tomb that Alice finds hard to shake off, even in the bright French sunshine. Puzzled by the words carved inside the chamber, Alice has an uneasy feeling that she has disturbed something which was meant to remain hidden... Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, a book was entrusted to Alais, a young herbalist and healer. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the book contains, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided by centuries but united by a common destiny, LABYRINTH is a powerful story steeped in the atmosphere and history of southern France."
An exciting book, it switches from Alais's story to that of Alice.  The description of the Languedoc  area makes you want to go and visit the places mentioned.

Overall Opinion:  Loved it

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Findings by Kathleen Jamie and The Lewis Man by Peter May

December 2012

"It's surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Kathleen Jamie, award winning poet, has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings."
I was the odd one out in our group on this book.  I couldnt really connect to it.  After discussion though we realised that it was a book to  pick up from time to time and read a chapter - it isnt a book to be read as a whole.  Her writing is very detailed, and you can see her love of nature through it.
Overall Opinion: Fair... a bedside or coffee table book.
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Our second book for the fast readers was Peter May's The Lewis Man.
"An unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog; the only clue to its identity being a DNA sibling match to a local farmer. But this islander, Tormod Macdonald - now an elderly man suffering from dementia - has always claimed to be an only child. When Tormod's family approach Fin Macleod for help, Fin feels duty-bound to solve the mystery."
The main thread does continue from where The Black House left off, going further into Fin's past and present.
Overall Opinion: Great
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The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling and American Wife by Curtis Sittenfield

November 2012

"When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils... Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?"
This is her first book for adults after the successful Harry Potter books, and you can see the talent she has for telling a good story.  We read this book so that we could form our own opinion of it after a lot of bad press she had about it.  The book, although not our favourite, certainly gave us more to discuss, each of us getting different things from it.  Overall Opinion.  Fair.... worth a read.
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The second book for fast readers was American Wife by Curtis Sittenfield
"In the year 2000, in the closest election in American history, Alice Blackwell's husband becomes president of the United States. Their time in the White House proves to be heady, tumultuous, and controversial.

But it is Alice's own story - that of a kind, bookish, only child born in the 1940s Midwest who comes to inhabit a life of dizzying wealth and power - that is itself remarkable. Alice candidly describes her small-town upbringing, and the tragedy that shaped her identity; she recalls her early adulthood as a librarian, and her surprising courtship with the man who swept her off her feet; she tells of the crisis that almost ended their marriage; and she confides the privileges and difficulties of being first lady, a role that is uniquely cloistered and public, secretive and exposed.
In Alice Blackwell, Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is not a novel about politics. It is a gorgeously written novel that weaves race, class, fate and wealth into a brilliant tapestry. It is a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare."
"A powerful, utterly compelling and strangely moving fictional account of a First Lady who bears more than a passing resemblance to Laura Bush" (Daily Mirror )
I loved this book - although I felt that the last section was rushed in comparison the depth in the earlier sections - maybe the author felt the book was getting too big?

Overall Opinion: Good
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The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown and The Black House by Peter May

October 2012

For the second meeting we decided that we would have a second book for those who read fast.
The main book was The Weird Sisters.
"Rosalind. Bianca. Cordelia. The Weird Sisters.
Rose always first, Bean never first, Cordy always last. The history of our trinity is fractious – a constantly shifting dividing line, never equal, never equitable. Two against one, or three opposed, but never all together.
Our estrangement is not drama-laden – we have not betrayed one another’s trust, we have not stolen lovers or fought over money or property or any of the things that irreparably break families apart. The answer, for us, is much simpler.
See, we love each other. We just don’t happen to like each other very much."
I personally loved this book.  I could not put it down and it left me wanting to hear more about these wonderful girls and their family.
Overall Opinion: Good Buy from Amazon

Our second book was The Black House by Peter May.

"A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith. A MURDER. Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past. A SECRET. Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister. A TRAP. As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted."
Gripping from page 1 another book that I could not put down.  A great insight into island life.

Overall Opinion: Brilliant

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Wait for Me by Deborah Devonshire

September 2012

This was the first book on our list.  It was chosen by myself as I had bought it for my Mother before she died.
We all agreed that it was not the sort of book that we would normally all pick.
Deborah was the youngest of the Mitford sisters, and the book gives a great insight into the way of life of such a family over the years. She talks candidly about her family, politcs and including her sister's dalliance with Hitler.  She is extremely candid about her husband's alcohol addiction, and the matter of fact way she deals with the death of 3 of her children brings tears to the eye.  She also describes the challenges in restoring and overseeing the day-to-day running of Chatsworth.
The book doesnt exactly flow and is very matter-of-fact, it is supplemented by photographs which are interesting.
Overall opinion.  Fair.  We are glad we read it.
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