December Books Meetup - "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

Come along to discuss the books we've chosen as a group recently, books in general or just to socialise with fellow book-lovers. Don't worry about the 'start time', anytime you can make it along is fine, but I'll aim to be there from 7 onwards.

we'll have been reading a few books in parellel over the last few months and hopefully made enough progress on "Middlemarch" by the date of this meeting that we'll be able to discuss it meaningfully...

"Middlemarch" by George Eliot - apparently this classic tale of complex tale of "idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love." is due to come out in a new film adaptation next year so now is a particularly good time to read it. Let's have a general target that we'll aim to discuss it in December but it's a long book so worth starting early.

plus possible further discussion of "Fascination" by William Boyd (short stories, see November meetup details) and "Nature Cure" by Richard Mabey (autobiography, see October meetup)

plus selection of other book(s) to be decided....

Other members have recently completed or are still reading the previous books we selected: "Money" by Martin Amis, "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga, "The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene, "A Kind Man" by Susan Hill, "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak, "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher" by Kate Summerscale, "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens, "Skippy dies" by Paul Murray, "Tender Morsels" by Margo Lanagan, "A Fortune-Teller Told Me" by Tiziano Terzani and "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel, so further discussion of those books is particularly welcome as well but please by all means just feel free to come along whether you've read any of these specific books or not :)

Some other books were mentioned as future possibilities so members might want to check these out to see which you like the idea of, though of course new suggestions are always welcome as well:

"The Yacoubian Building" by Alaa Al Aswany - bestseller about sex and power and life in modern-day Egypt.

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood - a multi-award winning dystopian work of speculative fiction which explores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency.

"Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky - a portrayal of life in and around Paris during the early "strangely peaceful" days after the german occupation in June 1940

"Rock On: An office power ballad" by Dan Kennedy: quoting from one review on amazon: "A very funny, if scary, book about the excesses of the record industry."

"The Leopard" by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - following the life of a 19th century Sicilian aristocrat.

"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley - much more philosophical than the films, "This book is surprising in how moving it is and shows the limits of our own ability to create or meddle with life."

"Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov - "Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows."

Additional non-mainstream possibilities that have been put forward (my response being that some of us might want to consider reading them in parallel with the 'main' books at some point)

(Poetry) "The Birthday Letters" by Ted Hughes - "88 tantalising responses to Sylvia Plath and the furies she left behind"

(Sci-Fi) "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin - "At once one of the greatest of SF novels about political ideas and idealism, and a stunning novel of character"