Book Group

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Columba Oct 2018 10:03pm, 30 Oct 2018 16,582 posts	0 Columba Just read a review of Milkman, and indeed it doesn't sound like an entirely easy read. I have requested it from the library, similarly There but for the.
McGoohan Oct 2018 10:30am, 31 Oct 2018 36,270 posts	0 McGoohan Due to the embedding thing Fetch has just released, I've deleted the TBFT poll - it was getting all kinds of 'experimental' votes more to do with testing Fetch's new function than from people having read the book
Columba Oct 2018 6:30pm, 31 Oct 2018 16,587 posts	0 Columba Kristin Lavransdatter arrived at, and collected from, the bookshop. 924 pages, not including the notes section at the end.
McGoohan Nov 2018 9:29am, 1 Nov 2018 36,301 posts	0 McGoohan Calling all Shirley Jackson fans! I've not read We Have Always Lived In Castleford, nor The Haunting of Hill House Hammond and so I was unfamiliar with her work but I know those are two well-loved books. Are they worth reading? If so, why? Is it more the memory that they were good but you haven't returned to them in years? Would they seem a bit 'hokey' now? The reason I ask is I am just finishing The Sundial which came out in 1958, the year before Hill House and it is terrible. It's not terrible in a Dan Brown way. It's more like someone had described a novel to a committee and then the committee had a go at writing one without consulting each other or anyone else. Uneven in tone doesn't cover it. It's a bit batty - there are a few characters straight out of Memento Mori, a bit absurdist, a bit horror, a bit sci-fi, a bit costume drama. It's all rather placeless as well - supposed to be the USA but it's like she wanted it to be Agatha Christie meets Jane Austen by way of Daphne du Maurier. I suspect it's supposed to be satirical but that the things satirised don't exist outside 1958 and now they just look like non-sequiters. Basic plot summary: stately home, where there has recently been a death. One of the characters has a vision of an impending apocalypse which all of the rest of the characters believe pretty much without question. They sort of carry on their lives in a belief the house will be spared, and them with it. The characters have names like Essex and Fancy. Someone turns up and he gets called The Captain for no good reason, though someone says, 'We shall call you Captain Scaramanganatha' or some such drivel. On the plus side, I appreciate both Wise Children and Memento Mori a bit more now. They might both be a little mad but at least they have a consistent style.
Diogenes Nov 2018 9:41am, 1 Nov 2018 31,452 posts	0 Diogenes WHALITC is well worth reading, I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy it more than Wise Children and at least as much as Momento Mori.
McGoohan Nov 2018 9:53am, 1 Nov 2018 36,307 posts	0 McGoohan Both WHALITC and THOHH are on my shelves... It's the unrealistic dialogue that kills The Sundial. It's a little bit 'Oh, don't be so terrible beastly Clive' and a little bit 'Haha,' she trilled, 'Then I shall throw a most splendid party but I shall not invite any of you. I simply shan't' That sort of thing.
DazTheSlug Nov 2018 10:25am, 1 Nov 2018 2,059 posts	0 DazTheSlug I was a bit underwhelmed by THOHH - good, but didn't knock my socks off WHALITC has a very quirky style/atmosphere and was right up my alley
McGoohan Nov 2018 10:27am, 1 Nov 2018 36,311 posts	0 McGoohan Well, 'quirky' isn't always a good thing. The Sundial is quirky in a 'Timmy Mallett trying to write Pride and Prejudice' sort of way.
GregP Nov 2018 10:30am, 1 Nov 2018 108,401 posts	0 GregP C-MODE was 'quirky' and I hated it.
Diogenes Nov 2018 12:17pm, 1 Nov 2018 31,454 posts	0 Diogenes Funny, irreverent, anarchic. Not quirky, Pam Ayres is quirky.