The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Next Meeting

When: January 25

Hostess: Eva

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. 

This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. < Read more

Finding My Virginity by Richard Branson

Next Meeting

When: November 30

Where: Jackie

Book: Finding My Virginity by Richard Branson 

From Amazon.com

"Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity shared the outrageous tale of how he built Virgin from a student magazine into one of the greatest brands in history. No challenge was too daunting, no opportunity too outlandish to pursue. And each new adventure started with five simple words: “Screw it, let’s do it.”

Now, fifty years after starting his first business, Branson shares the candid details of a lifetime of triumphs and failures and what he really thinks about his unique life and career. Finding My Virginity is an intimate look at his never-ending quest to push boundaries, break rules, and seek new frontiers—even after launching a dozen billion-dollar businesses and hundreds of other companies.

As he led Virgin into the new millennium, Branson fearlessly expanded the brand into new categories such as mobile, media, fitness, and banking and into every corner of the globe—all while preserving its iconoclastic, scrappy spirit. He even brought Virgin into space with Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline. Finding My Virginity takes us behind the scenes of the incredible brains, heart, and sacrifices that have gone into making private spaceflight an imminent reality—even after the biggest crisis Branson has ever faced.

But this book is much more than a series of business adventures. It’s also the story of Branson’s evolution from hotshot entrepreneur to passionate philanthropist and public servant, via Virgin Unite’s environmental and health initiatives and through the Elders, a council of influential global leaders. And it’s the story of his personal quest to become a better son, husband, father, and “grand-dude” to his four grandchildren.

Featuring a supporting cast that includes everyone from Bill Gates to Kate Moss, Nelson Mandela to Barack Obama, this is the gripping account of a man who will never stop reaching for the stars, in more ways than one. Find out how Branson did it for the first time—all over again."

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towels

Next Meeting

When: October 26

Where: Kevin

Book: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towels

From Amazon.com

“How delightful that in an era as crude as ours this finely composed novel stretches out with old-World elegance.” —The Washington Post
He can’t leave his hotel. You won’t want to.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. 

Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose."

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Next Meeting
When: September 28
Where: Helen
Book: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

From Amazon.com

"Tom Hazard has just moved back to London, his old home, to settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at school, he meets a captivating French teacher at his school who seems fascinated by him. But Tom has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.


How to Stop Time tells a love story across the ages—and for the ages—about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. It is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.

“She smiled a soft, troubled smile and I felt the whole world slipping away, and I wanted to slip with it, to go wherever she was going… I had existed whole years without her, but that was all it had been. An existence. A book with no words.”

Unfortunately for Tom, the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: Never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Benedict Cumberbatch."

A funny book about motherhood

Next Meeting
When: August 31
Where: Hazel
Book: Bonkers by Olivia Siegl

From Amazon.com

"A Real Mum’s Hilariously Honest Tales of Motherhood, Mayhem and Mental Health

‘You see, pre-motherhood I had this image of the sort of motherhood I was going to have. Happy, confident and in total control, breezing through my perfect new mum life, clad in white linen with a smiley easy-going baby attached to my hip. But then, something happened.’

This book is about bathing in the crazy, dirty, hilarious, bonkers truth about motherhood.

It’s about being brave.

It’s about empowering each other; talking about the times we get it wrong, our mental health, our worries about being perfect. It’s about admitting that we all need a little help.

For every mum out there feeling lost in the wilderness. For every mum feeling pressure to be perfect. For every mum questioning if they are good enough. You are magnificent."

'Beautifully written' Memoir is highly acclaimed by Guardian and other newspapers

Next Meeting
When: June 22* (one week earlier because of holidays)
Where: Ruth's
Book: Love Like Salt by Helen Stevenson

From Amazon.com:

"Did Clara taste salty when I kissed her? She did. She tasted of mermaids, of the sea.'

Love Like Salt is a deeply affecting memoir, beautifully and intelligently written. It is about mothers and daughters, music and illness, genes and inheritance, writing and story-telling. It is about creating joy from the hand you've been dealt and following its lead - in this case to rural France, where the author and her family lived for seven years. And back again.

'I had always written, and until the birth of Clara I wrote for a living. Once I knew the Cystic Fibrosis gene had unfolded itself in our daughter's body, like a paper flower meeting water, I felt that to write, even if I had had time, or been able, would have been to squander a kind of power which was needed for tending and nurturing. Every moment became a moment in which I protected my baby. Some of it I did in secret, like a madwoman muttering spells. I thought of her as a candle, cupping my hand around her.

A beautifully written memoir, in the vein of H is for Hawk and The Last Act of Love, about motherhood, music and living the best life you can, even in the shadow of illness."

A review in the Guardian

A 'modern classic' written by 'one of the most important young writers'

Next Meeting:
When: May 25
Where: Cristina's
Book: The Passion by Jeannette Winterson

From GoodReads: 

"Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion intertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.

In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects."

From Amazon: 

"Jeanette Winterson’s novels have established her as one of the most important young writers in world literature. The Passion is perhaps her most highly acclaimed work, a modern classic that confirms her special claim on the novel. Set during the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars, The Passionintertwines the destinies of two remarkable people: Henri, a simple French soldier, who follows Napoleon from glory to Russian ruin; and Villanelle, the red-haired, web-footed daughter of a Venetian boatman, whose husband has gambled away her heart. In Venice’s compound of carnival, chance, and darkness, the pair meet their singular destiny.

In her unique and mesmerizing voice, Winterson blends reality with fantasy, dream, and imagination to weave a hypnotic tale with stunning effects."

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail

When: April 20*
Where: Barbara's
Book:  Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Rusty Young

From Good Reads:

"Rusty Young was backpacking in South America when he heard about Thomas McFadden, a convicted English drug trafficker who ran tours inside Bolivia's notorious San Pedro prison. Intrigued, the young Australian journalist went to La Paz and joined one of Thomas's illegal tours. They formed an instant friendship and then became partners in an attempt to record Thomas's experiences in the jail. Rusty bribed the guards to allow him to stay and for the next three months he lived inside the prison, sharing a cell with Thomas and recording one of the strangest and most compelling prison stories of all time. The result is Marching Powder.

This book establishes that San Pedro is not your average prison. Inmates are expected to buy their cells from real estate agents. Others run shops and restaurants. Women and children live with imprisoned family members. It is a place where corrupt politicians and drug lords live in luxury apartments, while the poorest prisoners are subjected to squalor and deprivation. Violence is a constant threat, and sections of San Pedro that echo with the sound of children by day house some of Bolivia's busiest cocaine laboratories by night. In San Pedro, cocaine--"Bolivian marching powder"--makes life bearable. Even the prison cat is addicted. 

Yet Marching Powder is also the tale of friendship, a place where horror is countered by humor and cruelty and compassion can inhabit the same cell. This is cutting-edge travel-writing and a fascinating account of infiltration into the South American drug culture."

An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy

When: March 23*
Where: Lucy's
Book: The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis & Michael Lucey


From Amazon.com:

An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy.

“Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again . . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different―“girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.

Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result―a critical and popular triumph―has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.

From Penguin Books:

‘A brilliant novel… courageous, necessary and deeply touching’ Guardian

Édouard Louis grew up in a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. His bestselling debut novel about life there, The End of Eddy, has sparked debate on social inequality, sexuality and violence.

It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author’s own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, ultimately, it asks, how can we create our own freedom?

‘A mesmerising story about difference and adolescence’
New York Times

‘Édouard Louis…is that relatively rare thing – a novelist with something to say and a willingness to say it, without holding back’
The Times

‘Louis’ book has become the subject of political discussion in a way that novels rarely do’
Garth Greenwell, New Yorker


Read more by clicking here.

Imagine the near future where power is overtaken by the religious right

When: February 23, 2018
Where: Vre
Book: The Handmaids' Tale by Margaret Atwood

From Goodreads

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

From Amazon.co.uk

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed. Deserves the highest praise. -- San Francisco Chronicle