Runaway, by Alice Munro

A book of short stories by Nobel Prize winning Alice Munro, Runaway is a series of looks at life for mostly unsatisfied women in provincial Canada. Yup, it's good!

The Leopard, by Giovanni Tomasi Di Lampedusa

If you'd suggested a book about what happens to the landed gentry during the re-unification of Italy, I'd have rejected it. In fact, the group rejected it many times until Angus persuaded us to read The Leopard, by Giovanni Di Lampedusa. Set in Sicily when Garibaldi and Cavour are re-unifying Italy it's about more than its time. It's a stoic description of how the world changes around a wry and ageing aristocrat. How families go their own way, what you have left at the end of your life... and what happens after you go. Simply marvellous!

The Romantics, Pankaj Mishra

The Romantics by Pankaj Mishra ended up as our book for the summer.

It's a wistful evocation of a young Indian guy's encounter with Europeans in the 90s. Interesting, a bit predictable, and I didn't think the prose was as good as we were told on the covers...

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared.

Well, sometimes we read a dud book. I really wouldn't recommend The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.

It's apparently a "literary sensation". It's got rave reviews from all over Europe. And it's completely boring.

There's a present day "caper" in which our hero takes off, gets mixed up with crooks, and charming characters before it all works out.

Intersperesed with that is a tedious Forrest Gump-alike back story. It turns out that our hero met Churchill, Stalin, Mao, and a bunch of other big politicos (but not Hitler for some reason). His charm, implacability and unfeasible explosve skills gets him through, but so what?

Madame Bovary

Some of us found it hard going, but I thought Madame Bovary was great and - like Mrs Dalloway and the Grapes of Wrath, I might well not have read it without Book Group....

The Grapes Of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Excellent book.

March.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

There's no need to be afraid of Virginia Woolf, as it turns out. Mrs Dallloway turns out to be startlingly readable and profound.

Read January 2013.

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ

After Brian Clough and Hitler... Jesus.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was an interesting read. I can't add much to Rowan Williams' review of it in the Guardian.

That was the book we read for November / December 2012.