South London Book Club

Hello,

Ronald Blythe's Akenfield scored an impressive 8.1/10 last night at The Roundhouse.

After putting it to the vote, in May we will be going for Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote.

Of the book, Amazon says:
"It's New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany's. And nice girls don't, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while - down. Pursued by to Salvatore 'Sally' Tomato, the Mafia sugar-daddy doing life in Sing Sing and 'Rusty' Trawler, the blue-chinned, cuff-shooting millionaire man about women about town, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly 'top banana in the shock department', and one of the shining flowers of American fiction."
— https://amzn.eu/d/7wcUQ8Z

Of the author:
"Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions.
" — Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote

review of Breakfast at Tiffany's:
"In this book, Truman Capote once again suggests that he is perhaps the last of the old-fashioned Valentine makers. Here are four Valentines made by his own hand: a short novel and three stories. They bear his unmistakable touch.

The short novel, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," is a valentine of love, fashioned by way of reminiscence, to one Holly Golightly, a "real phoney" and one-time inhabitant of a brownstone in the east Sixties of New York City. This is a very funny portrait of an ex-child wife--from some place named Tulip, Tex.--who made several mistakes upon coming to New York, the most serious of which was getting herself mixed up with Tiffany's and falling in with the Colony set and the El Morocco crowd.

She is a wild thing searching for something to belong to. Mr. Capote makes her say, in lucid and poetic explanation of herself, "Never love a wild thing * * * you can't give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky."
— New York Times
(https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-tiffanys.html)

Can't go wrong then, can we?

Make sure you have read the book and bring a suggestion for the Group to read ahead of the June meeting for us all to vote on.

£1.50 fee is to help with the organiser's meetup.com costs.

Bring your pub money but you don't have to bring a copy of the book.

Best wishes,

David

Hello,

Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing scored a chastening 6.6/10 last night at The Roundhouse.

After putting it to the vote, in June we will be going for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson.

Of the book, Waterstones say:
"Roaring down the desert highway, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo are seeking out the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, they confront casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans, in surreal, chemically enhanced encounters.
Hilarious, hallucinogenic and subversive, Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel is a cult classic and a masterpiece of gonzo journalism."
— https://www.waterstones.com/book/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas/hunter-s-thompson/9780008557546

Of the author:
"Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living with the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. In 1970, he wrote an unconventional article titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly, which further raised his profile as a countercultural figure. It also set him on the path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative.
Thompson remains best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972), a book first serialized in Rolling Stone in which he grapples with the implications of what he considered the failure of the 1960s counterculture movement."
— Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Capote

review of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
"On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first- rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past and a nugget of pure comedic genius"
— Amazon
(https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fear-Loathing-Las-Vegas-Perennial/dp/0007204493/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)

Can't go wrong then, can we?

Make sure you have read the book and bring a suggestion for the Group to read ahead of the July meeting for us all to vote on.

£1.50 fee is to help with the organiser's meetup.com costs.

Bring your pub money but you don't have to bring a copy of the book.

Best wishes,

David