Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, 12 November

Here's one I liked enough to recommend to my wife. Revolutionary Road is hailed as a modern (1950s) Gatsby, and that was before Leonardo DiCaprio played the lead in both movies.

I see the comparison; it's not awash with money and privilege like Gatsby, it's a claustrophobic tale of a couple who don't love each other and are stuck in suburbia, with dreams, manipulating each other and not getting what they want.

That sounds dull. But the characters live, the examination of how they live is relentless and ruthless. This book deserves all the praise it has had. What happens is inevitable, predictable even, but still gripping.

As a side benefit, there's a chilling picture of the beginning of my job. Frank works for a bureaucratic monster that sells computers, which is obviously IBM and at the moment he stops caring for the work, he finds himself writing marketing spiel for the technology. He ends up in the beginnings of the advertising/PR industry

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, 23 September

The second book we have read by Turkey's Nobel Prize winning Orhan Pamuk, and a bit of a disappointment to me.

This is a short early work, and it's all very post-modern. Does it happen or doesn't it? Is the manuscript reliable? A bit Calvino, a bit Borges, apparently.

A young man sailing from Venice to Naples is seized by pirates and sold into slavery in Constantinople. As he meets a "twin" we confront the contrasts between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman Empire, or at least that's the idea. The two form an intense master-slave relationship and go from there.

There are plagues and mad inventions, and a climax during a battle with the Poles. At the end, they've changed places - or have they? That's not a spoiler, it's telegraphed through the whole book.

I found it dull.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, 30 July

What did I miss? It's a story of Toru Watanabe, looking back on his student days and his loves.

He is obsessed by Naoko and maybe Midori loves him. But who cares? Watanabe is a boring tosser, there is nothing remotely attractive about Naoko and everyone seems to spend forever moping around obsessing about themselves, till by and large they commit suicide.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood, 3 June

Here's a strange book. Strange and intriguing. The antireligious antihero, Hazel Motes, preaches a Church Without Christ in a Tennessee town, lives with a prostitute, gets tangled with a blind preacher and his daughter, along with a weird and dark set of characters including a man in a gorilla suit.

It's all tragic, and strange, and portentous. Well worth reading.

Tim Lott, Rumours of a Hurricane, 29 April

It's not the worst book we've read, but I found Rumours of a Hurricane by Tim Lott, supposedly "tragic and hilarious in equal measure" to be cringe-making and unlovable.

A cast of pretty obvious characters have the obvious experiences you'd expect from people going through the upheaval of the Thatcher years. A man buys his council flat, his wife has an affair, his brother is a cowboy builder, he's a printer so of course he's in the Wapping strikes.

There's a couple of moments of reality around racism, but the rest is just clinical, superior to everything, and yet wallowing in the stuff it despises.  

W G Sebald, Rings of Saturn (26 March)

W G Sebald's Rings of Saturn has built up a reputation as some sort of "essential reading" - at least for some people. Sebald writes ruminative rambling non-fiction with historical and current day observations pegged onto - in this case - a walk in Suffolk.

This stuff gets rave reviews, and seems to be a yardstick as other difficult-to-categorise non-fiction gets measured against it.

Close up, it's not so esential. It's a good and interesting read, but a bit like one person doing a whole Qi show on his own.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (25 Feb)

It won every award, and it has been on our shortlist more times than any other book (I think). Finally, we read it and - by and large - loved it.

It's got a cast of characters, punchy scenes, and weighty issues that would (and will) suit a TV miniseries - a Tudor West Wing, if you like.

You feel like you are inside the minds of these historical people, at one moment lulled by something almost contemporary - irritation at paperwork, say - and the next you're confronted as a matter of fact, with something almost completely alien - routine executions, or Divine Right.

The second book was good too, and so were the plays...

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.

Explaining Hitler....

How do you follow Brian Clough? Well, all discussions are supposed to get to Hitler in the end, and now we have.

Explaining Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum is a serious attempt to not so much "explain" Hitler and his evil, but to examine and converse with all the different attempts people have made to explain Hitler and his evil.

The introduction sets out some serious points - for instance what do we mean by Hitler's evil. His actions were evil, and he was wrong, but if he believed he was doing good, was he evil?

Does the book go into the more sensationalist stuff? Probably. The index does not include a reference to "testicle, one" or even "monorchism", but the subject is dealt with, in depth in the book...

Read and discussed in September 2012.

The Damned Utd

Next up, a book variously called the best book about football ever, or the best book about sport ever. The Damned Utd by David Peace.

I was handed a World Book Day copy by Dean, who sells me my Big Issue on Charing Cross Road.

I have the feeling it's not going to live up to the reputation...

Hanif Kureishi - The Buddha of Suburbia

Hanif Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia, a good read, rambling and passionate, but a bit creepy in parts.

Many of the characters are apparently based on real ones, and Kureishi's sister has criticised the way he has used his family.

Charlie sounds a lot like Billy Idol to me. (and in indeed Billy Idol was a member of the Bromley Contingent of Sex Pistols fans).

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

This time, The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. Completely mad, and very inventive. I found it a bit tiresome in parts. It does have the most sensual description of a bike ride that I've read though.

Alone in Berlin, by Hans Fallada

In February, we read Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. A truly stunning book. Taken from the details of a true case, it perfectly describes the terrifying banality - and farcicality - of evil.

It was almost forgotten and only recently translated into English, perhaps owing to the ambiguous nature of Fallada's life. Somewhat similar in outlook to Celine.

A must-read, and I'm glad we did it.