January meeting, March book

January meeting was at Ros's place, with a good roll-up, missing Sue E and Liz but otherwise all in attendance. The book was The Namesake by Jhumpa Lampiri. At Sue W's suggestion, we took turns to comment around the table, before opening discussion to the floor. This was deemed a most satisfactory addition to our afternoon's deliberations, to become standard practice in the future. The book was well-received, an easy to read coming of age story for a young man straddling 2 cultures. We liked the way it referred to Gogol's story 'The Overcoat' which added depth. Several of us had sought it out to clarify its relationship to the story.

We voted for the annual best/ worst books of 2013. Everyone agreed that the winner shouldn't really have been The Rosie Project - but 3 people voted for it as their most enjoyable, fun read of the year, and other favourites were split across a range of excellent novels. One person put The Rosie Project as their worst book! We had a fair amount of agreement that the worst book as Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, not that it was terrible, but this was a strong year.

The March book is to be Hannah Kent's Burial Rites after quite a bit of discussion and shows of hands. Other contenders were a new novel, All the Birds, Singing by Edie Wyld and Life after Life by Kate Atkinson. We've had a few instances of people reading the wrong book so maybe I shouldn't have mentioned them. Forget them, it's to be Burial Rites. That meeting will be at Jane's home.

The next meeting is at Margaret Lackenby's house at Kirribilli, on 23 February so we don't have long to read The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.