Hi
We met at Jane's - last time at her beautiful home, because next time it will be in her new place in Woolstonecraft - beautiful too, I'm sure.

We had little to say about the book. No one had liked it sufficiently to engage.
We did have plenty to say on related topics though!

Next book - June - we have at Stella's place. Jane was already reading the book, Diamond Star Halo, and loving it.

We decided on a new book, Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey for July which we think is at Pat's place in Macleay Street - will need confirmation and details, please Pat.

That's the news for now.

June book -

Book is Diamond Star Halo, by Tiffany Murray, Portabello, $29.99.

It was the Pick of the Week in SMH Spectrum today, if you want to read a summary. Sounds like fun. We rejected lots of other options to settle on this! It sounds like it will take us in another direction - See the Guardian review of it here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/09/diamond-star-halo-murray-review


The May meeting is a Jane's and the June meeting at Stella's.

We had a lively meeting - we got stuck into today's book, On-Nibus straight off, and found plenty to say about it. It was judged a good choice for book group, but we've done our ration of non-fiction for now. Sue made her authentic Anzac Biscuits! (as well as a carrot cake).

May meeting - the book will be Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence. Meeting is a Jane's house.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/orhan-pamuks-new-book-ith_n_337726.html

April Book: THE ON-NIBUS by David Malouf and others.

Read more about it at:

http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9780522857207&Author=Various

This will be at Sue E's place.

MARCH BOOK: LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, by Colum McCann. This comes heavily recommended:

2009 National Book Award Winner
Amazon.com's "Book of the Year"
Oprah.com's "Books You Can't Put Down" Summer Reading Selection

And more importantly, Margaret L is reading it and says we'll love it.

This is at Ros's house.

BRIEF UPDATE: At our February 2010 meeting, there was a request to update the blog.
Six people can write in the blog - Sue E, Sue W, Margaret L, Pat R, Ros M and me, according to the settings. If anyone else wants to, I will add their names.

Anyone can read the blog - anyone who knows the address that is, I have set it so it won't be found with a google search, to minimise spam.

Thanks for contributions - books for last half of 2009 in short were:
August: White Tiger (Aravind Adiga)

Sept: Man Gone Down (Michael Thomas)

October: How to Paint a Dead Man (Sarah Hall)

November: Love and Summer (William Trevor)
January: The Road by Cormac McCarthy at Sue W's

August Book
We will be reading the Booker winner The White Tiger: A Novel by Aravind Adiga for our August book.

I couldn't host the July meeting so Ros has stepped into the job. Have a great time.

JULY BOOK
We decided on Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates as the July book, which will be at my place on 26 July.
Apparently The Times voted Richard Yates as one of the best 100 writers in English from 1923 to the present. This book was written in 1961.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Road



The June book will be at Stellas, that's the Obama Dreams for my Father.

Clare excelled with the Plum Crumble cake today, but we didn't have much to say about Leave to Remain. Sue commented on how cursory our notes are getting recently and we have resolved to lift our game!

June Book
We decided on Barack Obama's Dreams of my Father. June meeting will be at Stella's. May meeting will be at Clare's.

Lovely day at Margaret's on Sunday, but we missed all the people on holidays.

Cheers to all.

May book - Leave to Remain - Abbas El Zein.
Abbas El Zein's latest book, Leave to Remain, is a memoir about growing up in civil-war Lebanon and migrating to the west. He is a featured writer at the Sydney Writers Festival. If you are planning your Festival trip, he is in a free group presentations: Lived Lives on May 21, 10 to 11am, and Conflict and Childhood, on May 23 1.30 to 2.30 SDC4. He is also free at Ashfield Library on May 21, 6.30-7.30, but you have to book on 97161810.

We had a good time discussing The Boat at Sue's place on Sunday and decided that the April bookgroup - The Elegance of the Hedgehog will be held at Margaret's place.

Congratulations to Pat on her new grandson.

April Book

Muriel Barbery: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Interview: Christos Tsiolkas and Sophie Cunningham on The Slap.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1356

Jane's Cherry Cake

250g tin cherries drained
125 g dried apricots chopped
125 g dried figs chopped
125 g chopped nuts (walnuts, almonds or pecans)
150 g plain flour
2 ¼ tsp baking powder
165 g sugar
3 eggs
1 egg white
¼ cup vegetable oil
60 ml brandy
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract

Combine cherries, apricots, figs, nuts, flour, baking pdr and half the sugar. Beat egg & egg whites with remaining sugar then stir in the oil, brandy, almond & vanilla extracts. Stir egg mixture into the fruit mixture. Bake in a lined & buttered tin @ 180 for 40 – 45 mins. Cool on a rack for 15 mins before turning out. Keeps up to 4 days in the fridge……………if you can resist eating it for that long!

Enjoy!

Jane

PS re February book group.
Looks like its a day trip book group, not a sleep over, in February at Moy's on the Central Coast.

March book

Title: The Boat

Author: Nam Le

Location: Sue Ellyard's house

I'm the fifth reserve through Hornsby library, which means I'll have to buy the book, I fear.

There's a transcript of a Peter Mares ABC interview at:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2273652.htm

Blurb from Penguin is
The Boat will take you everywhere.
In 1979, Nam Le's family left Vietnam for Australia, an experience that inspires the first and last stories in The Boat. In between, however, Le's imagination lays claim to the world.
The Boat takes us from a tourist in Tehran to a teenage hit man in Columbia; from an aging New York artist to a boy coming of age in a small Victorian fishing town; from the city of Hiroshima just before the bomb is dropped to the haunting waste of the South China Sea in the wake of another war.
Each story uncovers a raw human truth. Each story is absorbing and fully realised as a novel. Together, the make up a collection of astonishing diversity and achievement.
'Nam Le is extraordinary, a writer who will be heard. The Boat will be read for as long as people read books. Its vision and its power are timeless.' - Mary Gaitskill
'Wonderful stories that snarl and pant cross our crazed world... and extraordinary performance. Nam Le is a heartbreaker, not easily forgotten.' - Junot Diaz
'A fearless new Australian voice that accepts no geographical limits; these are stories of leaping power and the most breathtaking grace and intimacy.' - Helen Garner

February book is Christos Tsiolkas The Slap, a bit of a door-stop of a book so get reading! Should make for interesting discussion at Moy's where the is the possibility of a sleepover meeting.

January book is Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, which I can highly recommend. January meeting is at Jane's.

November book choice confirmed:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Scheiffer

You remember that the October book is the 25 year Booker of Bookers Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.

At the September meeting, The Household Guide to Dying stimulated lots of discussion, ranging beyond its literary merits. We all enjoyed reading the book but found the plot/ situation unravelling a bit under scrutiny. We would recommend it to others though.

Moy's Birthday Bash














































It was a great evening with the star looking spectacular in black and red witha red chapeau and ostrich feather perched jauntily on mass of curls. All guests dressed for the occasion.

Unfortunately the star of the show does not appear here due to technical problems (I dropped my camera). Hopefully this can be rectified.

Happy 70th Birthday to Moy

Ros has turned the Book Group's halting rhymes into a great little poem, entitled:

IRREPRESSIBLE

Moy, you are arty,
Life of the party.
We’re dressing up tarty
For your food that is hearty.

You’re a bloody great cook;
We should write a book.
May you never get crook
In your Long Jetty nook.

How long have you been
On our lit’rary scene?
At our book group so keen
And so frequently seen.

Together we’ve shared,
Our souls we have bared,
Books, we’ve declared,
For each other we’ve cared.

Together we pen,
So, women and men,
On her three score and ten
Le’s drink to our fren’.

The Book Group
September 6 2008