March's Book Club Choice-Women's Prize for Fiction

  The Silence of The Girls  

by  

Pat Barker

Title: The Silence Of The Girls

Author: Pat Barker

Publisher: Penguin Random House UK

Publication Date: 30th August 2018

Genre: Fiction

Summary: 

When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by the Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be a bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men - but Briseis has a very different tale to tell.....

ISBN: 978-0-241-98320-1

Review:

March's book choice came from the shortlist of books on the women's prize for fiction 2019, minus one as we'd already read Circe in December.

After reading Circe I was excited to see this book win the vote! As soon as I read the synopsis I knew I had to vote for it :) Recently I seem to have found some fab books based around Greek mythology and I've added many to my to-be-read pile(one day I suspect ill be found buried under my tbr pile!)
What I loved about this book is that its told from a woman's perspective and, for a change, the woman isn't Helen of Troy! I'd never heard of Briseis before reading this book but then again I only know the basics about the Trojan war and I've never read around the subject, I suspect I will in the future (another addition to that tbr pile).

Now the book doesn't shy away from the brutality of the situation Briseis (and various other women) is in, it tends to be quite graphic, to be honest. The detailed description of her situation and what happens/is done to her means that you do think well what would I do in her place, would I have chosen to follow the same path or would I have jumped at the beginning as her cousin did. It's also easy to forget that this brutality does still occur and women are still subjected to this treatment in some parts of the world (I'll be honest while reading this book I forgot that and was reminded by the lovely Val during our meeting). Now don't get me wrong, I really loved this book but I did think that occasionally she used quite modern phrasing/words and it felt out of place. Not quite jarring but borderline.
It's definitely a book I would read again and I've already recommended it to a few people!

Krystina xx


Book Club Score- 7/10

January's Book Club Choice-Classic Books

                       One Hundred Years of Solitude
                                   
                                              by
                   

                                Gabriel Garcia Marques 

Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Publisher: Penguin

Publication Date:1970 ( in English)

Summary: Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly formed village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia and his father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands.

Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, hauntings, and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message it holds.

ISBN:978-0-241-96858-1

Review:
So from the off, I was not looking forward to this book. The synopsis didn't draw me in and frankly, it just didn't interest me. But knowing I needed to read it for book club I gave it a go and let me tell you its a hard slog of a book. So much so that I only made it 30 pages before I gave up! This is not normal for me and I have tried a few times since to finish it but I just can't. I have no interest in finishing it and I doubt I'll pick it up again.

Sorry for the short review on this one but I really don't have much to say about it.

Book Club Score-3/10

So.....

So. I had a plan to review all the book club books from December 2019  through to now and post them in the correct order....but that clearly hasn't happened! 
I could faff and pretend but honestly, I just haven't had the time to go back and read them to refresh my memory before writing the review and having an almost 10-month-old doesn't help with this( i swear he knows when I try and sit for 10 minutes to read). 

So what I'm going to do instead is post what I have and add the rest in as and when I can sit and read them! They may be out of order but I promise by the end of the year there will be a full set of reviews!

Now back to posts....

Krystina xx

Book Club Themes for 2020

Book Club Themes for 2020

So I thought id do I quick post giving a rundown of the theme plans for this year( yeah I'm that organized lol). Some of them were chosen because of the month (etc March is women's history month so we use the women prize for fiction for choices), others because we really wanted to add something in we haven't read for the past couple of years under that big bookclubs umbrella. We also added in a few different ideas but you'll see that in a minute :)
So here goes, the 2020 list;

January- Classic books 

We took these choices from a list of classic books that members had always wanted to read but had never got round to. One Hundred Years of Solitude won this one!

February- Waterstones book of the year 2019

Literally, the choices were every book on the list(even the cookbook). The Testaments won this.

March- Women's History Month 

Because it's women's history month we took choices from the women prize for fiction 2019. The Silence of the Girls won this(was very excited about this)

April- Poetry Month

For something a little different for poetry month, instead of a book to read all members are bringing their favorite poem and we'll discuss!

May- Folklore Fiction

We had a book last year that was based around some folklore and enjoyed the genre so decided to see what else was out there in this genre :)

June-  Non-Fiction

Because this isn't a genre that normally ends up in book club choices, so let's give it a go! I could live to regret that choice.

July- Romance, Local Author

We picked Romance for July as it's a good genre to take with you on holiday, nice fun summer read. And because we have a local author that has some fab books in that genre I decided to add that element in :) So July we will be reading a book by Cathy Bramley!

August- Biographies

There are so many good ones out there and again its not normally a book club choice.

September- Banned Books

There are so many banned books I've never read and I'm curious to read and see why they were banned. So I guess this was a little bit selfish on my part.

October- Black History Month

Again chosen because this is black history month, not sure yet where we might get our choices from so any suggestions are welcome in the comments :) 

November- Horror

Pushed back a month but determined to fit it in. November's still scary right?

December- Short Stories

Now December is a busy month and our meetings are usually a few weeks early so a short story collection seemed the best idea. That way if you don't finish the whole book you'll still have managed a couple of stories :)

Ok, so that was a slightly longer run down than I planned but oh well!

Krystina xx

Hello and welcome...

To the restarting of this blog!
I've been quite frankly rubbish at this for the moment I started it but that's about to change for two reasons;
1) We're on lockdown and because of my asthma, I'm stuck here for a while so you're stuck with me!
2) It's now linked in with my book club! Admittedly I've been running my book club for 3 years but we're now out from under the umbrella of a global one and doing it our own way!

So originally my plan was to post a couple of times a month with posts about what the book club is reading and our collective thoughts on it but it might be more often than that if I can get into the swing of things ;) I'll also be posting the questions on the book before the meeting so if you happen to be reading along with us from another city feel free to comment with you thoughts to any of the questions :)

A little bit about book club now. We're called One More Chapter and we're Nottingham based. We're also a female-only book club(sorry boys!) and we meet on the last Monday of the month at a place called  The 38 Playwright (normally but life's not normal right now). Meetings start at 7pm and cost £5 a month, this covers the cost of a raffle book and any running costs. Now the raffle book is always a copy of next month's book so it's worth waiting to see if you win it before you buy it.
We're a friendly bunch so when all this has settled down and we're back to normal meetings come along and join us! But in the meantime visit our Facebook page @onemorechapternotts and our Instagram @omcbookclub

So I've got a little backlog of books I need to get post/review happy with starting with Circe by Madeline Miller which was our December book ( told you I had a backlog!) but I will sort that as soon as possible!

Final note hello to any of my book club ladies reading this *waves*

Krystina xx

Late start to the new year!

Hello to anyone out there reading! I've been very lax in my posting but i plan to change that. Admittedly this change should have started with the new year, or at least on a Monday (but hey Fridays can be a good time for change right??!)  But there's no time like the present.
This book lover has taken on a new challenge, i'm one of the organisers for the Nottingham The Girly Book Club! So with this new challenge i've decided to link it in with my blog here in an attempt to get the reviews flowing.The first meeting is on the 27th of March (if you happen to want to come along find us on Meetup.com) so sometime soon after that i'll post my review of the first book!

March's book is called "Swear on this life" by Renee Carlino and having read the blurb on the back it sounds rather interesting and i cant wait to get stuck in!  Here's the cover in case anyone is in a nosey mood.

So with that i'll leave this post and hopefully you'll get some new this to have a gander at soon :)

K xx

           Otherworld Secrets

                                    By

                 Kelley Armstrong

Title: Otherworld Secrets

Author: Kelley Armstrong

Publisher: Orbit

Publication Date: October 6th 2015

Genre: Fantasy
ISBN: 978-0-356-50067-6

Summary:

The collection begins with a brand-new novella featuring werewolf Karl Marsden and half-demon Hope, in what might be Karl's last heist. Meanwhile Elena and Clay are trapped in a wintry small town with a killer on the loose,in the fast-paced and atmospheric novella 'Forbidden'.

In 'Angelic', former black witch and part-time angel Eve is sent on a dangerous mission by the Fates, while necromancer Jamie tackles a ghost with a seriously bad attitude in 'The Ungrateful Dead'. Zoe Takano  is forced to defend her territory in the hugely entertaining 'Zen and the Art of Vampirism'. And in the final novella, 'Counterfeit Magic' Paige Winterbourne and Lucas Cortez  take on a troubling case that will change the couple for ever.

Review:

OK, so I'll start this off by telling you a little bit about the series that these novella originate from.
I've been reading my way through Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series for a few years now, and I have to say, I love it!

The series of which these novella draw their origins starts with 'Bitten' (which I'm likely to review later), which is the story of Elena - the only female werewolf.Throughout the Women of the Otherworld series we meet some fantastic female characters,each woman is strong, considered the equal of their men in battle - and their men are by no means weak!

This set of novellas are stand alone stories though they do slot between main books. You don't need to have read the main books (though I highly recommend that you do) to read the novellas as each one gives a small backtrack of sorts. You very quickly get informed of who characters are without it disrupting the story or getting irritating for those who are already familiar with the series.

Karl and Hope's story is one of the novella in this book, and it is a lovely little one at that. The short story focuses around Karl (a werewolf and an ex-thief) being tempted into one last heist, despite being a retired thief,and his dealing with those who try to tempt him. Through the novella you discover Karl retired from the robbery business because he and Hope have a child, and now that she's pregnant for the second time he's ever more determined not to go back; but a client is just as determined to drag Karl back into his old habits. It is a fantastic piece of writing, you really do feel for Karl as he fights against his inner demons, whilst trying to do right by Hope and his child, to be a good man (wolf?)




Elena and Clay come once more into a collection and as always its a great story. This time they get stuck in a small " hick town" when coming to the rescue of a young werewolf, which gets them caught up in small town murders. Morgan (the young werewolf) is a character we've met before but he was in his wolf form when we did; experimenting living as a wolf for a year without changing back to his human form. In that book Elena offered him the chance to visit The Pack and now he's human he decides to take them up on it.

Morgan's choice of town to stop and rest seems appropriate. The high school mascot is a werewolf, but that also causes the odd issue when the murders start happening due to the murders seeming to have been committed by a wolf; is Morgan the killer? Elena and Clay have to figure out the murders and who's responsible before they can risk taking Morgan back to The Pack, their family.

It's hard to pick a favourite out of these novella, each one is fantastic and its a shame they aren't full novels! However, seeing as I'm reviewing this collection of short stories (and let's face it you want to know the good and the bad - spoiler: there is no bad),  I'm going to have to go with Jamie's novella 'The Ungrateful Dead' . It's such a good giggle; the banter between Jamie and the ghosts is laugh out loud funny and her way of dealing with them (which i wont spoil) is genius!

Although I've picked this novella as my favourite they are all filled with little bouts of the giggles because of  the quips that characters come out with and that makes me love them all.

In short i highly recommend this book and direct you to get it out of your library or from your local bookstore without fail! :)