The Room Of Lost Things

The Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy is a Brixton book, and one of the best ones I've read. About an old white man handing over his life's work, a dry cleaner's in Coldharbour Lane, to a young Muslim. There are plenty of characters, and lots of scenes that completely bring Brixton back to life for me. And the ending is a quiet shock.

(April 2011)

Frankenstein

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley turned out to be an interesting read. Profound and moving, though the plot seemed so strange, and it was completely soaked in Mary Shelley's life.

I wondered if the book could consistently be read so that the monster was actually a figment of Victor's imagination, and he actually committed the murders himself. You would have to rewrite parts quite a lot, but basically no one ever sees the monster, except the ship's captain and Victor. And Victor's alibis are strong but not completely unshakeable.

Of course, it turns out that Peter Ackroyd has already done this version.

I also watched Young Frankenstein and read Brian Aldiss's Frankenstein Unbound - neither of which I'd got round to before. The Aldiss book is very interesting.

The Towers Of Trebizond

We've had this on the shortlist a couple of times, because someone in the group heard that it has what is often quoted as the best opening sentence ever: '"Take my camel, dear", said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.'

The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay is a cult book for High Anglicans, and very funny and perceptive about the Middle East. It is a marvellous read, with a moving kick to it. It is also, apparently, autobiographical.

(January 2011)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (December 2010). Catching up on those books we should have read, and also picking up on classics that are comfortably short.

Dorian Gray is a great book - that scarcely needs to be said. It's got masses of intelligence, flavour and interest, and it is a book that seems like a key to the time it was written. there are odd parts to it, and it's clearly been written and rewritten with an eye on what the public will think, but this really is a book everyone should read.

The Canon - The Beautiful Basics Of Science

The Canon by Natalie Angier (October 2010). It's a travesty of science writing, and we hated it. I advise anyone to stay away.

Instead of actually explaining anything (apart from a good bit about probability near the beginning), Angier layers on inconsequential and irritating drivel about her life, namde-dropping a lot of scientists she has met.

It doesn't give you the basic esssentials of science, it doesn't make them clearer, and it doesn't make connections. I think it's the biggest failure we have read.

The Horse's Mouth

Taking books to a boot sale, I failed to get rid of this one. In fact, someone came up, bought it, and gave it back to me, saying. "This is my favourite book. I have it already. I have bought it for you."

The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Carey is about an artist with a massive urge to make art, and an inability to actually relate to people. It's full of beautiful painterly descriptions of London scenes from the 1940s, with a massively appropriate Stanley Spencer picture on the cover.

We liked it, and I want to track down the film... starring and written by Alec Guiness, directed by Ronald Neame.

The Good Doctor

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut on June 23, 2010.

Interesting slightly Graham Greene-ish novel about post-apartheid South Africa, and goings on at a hospital a long way from the country's sentre.

A Dog's Heart

A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bukgakov, 12 May.

Satirical and dark. Well worth a read.

The Great Gatsby

By F Scott Fitzgerald, April 14 2010

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Next up -Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. A literary memoir about a woman reading forbidden Western literature in post-revolutionary Iran.

Meeting at Omar's on 24th,

Just a thought, but should these ladies by showing so much hair?

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, regarded as an essential classic. Another alienated young man (is this a pattern, guys?) but this time a black American writing before the Civil Rights movement.

This book changed lives and could be said to have changed American literature. It's also apparently still resonant now and regarded as essential reading by many. American Amazon reviews give you a feel for its impact ("A heartbreaking work of staggering genius" - but also a few heartfelt gripes by school student forced to read it).

We're meeting to talk it over on 13 January at Craig's.

The Mighty Walzer

Ping-pong, sex, alienation and coming of age. Howard Jacobson's Mighty Walzer is somewhat autobiographical, given both Howard and Oliver Walzer grew up Jewish in 1950s Manchester and played ping-pong for Cambridge.

Moving and funny when it's implausible tall stories recollected from youth in Manchester, strangely perfunctory when it moves to adulthood.

We discussed it at Peter's

The Brief and Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, a story of a nerd obsessive boy growing up in New York as part of the diaspora of the Dominican Republic.

Sex, comic books, alienation, comedy and police brutality. Can't miss.

Cry The Beloved Country

Next up Cry The Beloved Country, by Alan Paton.

Meeting place to be confirmed, date probably 9 September.

Notes from Underground

Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground is apparently the world's first "existential novel". Like most of the other books we read, it's an awkward guy - this time to the max: it's the "rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator".

We understand it inspired Taxi Driver and American Psycho (Can we have a nice well-adjusted bloke sometime?)

We're reading it because it made Angus the man he is, and because it's shorter than anything else Dostoevsky wrote.

Discussing it at Craig's on 1 July.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is short and well-written, from a viewpoint we don't often get (though, hey-ho, it's yet another self-absorbed, slightly asocial man).

We liked it, but not as much as the critics. His girlfriend - and her life path - seemed a bit convenient and symbolic (her name is Erica as in am-Erica). The story is left hanging at the end. It's all very allusive, but we're philistines and like events and narrative.

You wouldn't catch Khaled Hosseini doing that in the Kite Runner (but then he was a doctor when he wrote that, not a writer).

The Sheltering Sky

Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky was a big hit when it came out, featuring a marriage breaking down in the exotic setting of North Africa after the War.

Very odd, for me something like a cross between - or a missing link between -- Graham Greene and JG Ballard. You start with Americans lost in a post-colonial world, out of their depth. There's a disaster, and a bizarre closing section where the survivor pushes further into the unknown world.

Well worth reading, and resonates more a little while after

John Updike's Villages

The book for March was Villages, by John Updike. What with him recently dying, we thought we should see what all the fuss was about.

Probably, we should have gone for a better and earlier book. This was yet another book about a self-absorbed bloke, with too much flash-back. Even the presence of sex and the development of the computer graphics industry weren't enough to excite.

Still, the last chapter or two, with ageing people sinking into a tetchy church-administered rest, had something of an American Alan Bennett.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

A German novel that either confronts love law and literature, with grief and guilt (Amazon reviewer) , or "reimagines Nazi war guilt and the death camps in terms of a middlebrow sentimental-erotic fantasy", (Guardian reviewer Peter Bradshaw on the film) .

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink is our next book, and we'll be talking about it at my place.

Date still to be confirmed.

Engleby , Sebastian Faulks, 16 December

So the Road was great: "Sparsely but compellingly written, the bare bones of a story, but oddlysatisfying. Macabre."

This time round, a portrait of an outsider in the 70s, Engleby by Sebastian Faulks.

I've never read one of his, so I'm pleased. Amazon readers rate this one highly, and many of them also bought another contender, The Book Thief, so Justin is right on the zeitgeist.

We're meeting at Craig's, 16 December.

Lambeth Libraries catalogue is showing copies available...