Our fantastic book group have pulled together a list of forthcoming titles that they will be reading over the next year or so. Some really great reads on the list, have a look and get in touch if you are interested in joining. Most titles are available from Glasgow City Council Library Service and distributed at each meeting to members, with spare copies left for collection in the Library. After reading, books can either be left at the Library, or returned to any Glasgow City Council public library.
The Woman in Black (1983) Susan Hill
Susan Hill: “I decided I would see if I could bring off a full-length ghost story and I began by making a list of essential ‘ingredients.’ These included: 1 A haunted place. A lonely house or church, 2. Atmosphere 3. Weather – fog or mist, dusk, twilight, drizzle… and 4. A ghost with a purpose. “ The book spawned a popular play which has been running since 1989.
The Thorn Birds (1977) Colleen McCullough
Set in the Australian outback, The Thorn Birds focuses on the Cleary family and daughter Meggie’s relationship with priest Ralph de Briccasart over the course of nearly 60 years. In 1983 it was adapted as a television mini-series that became the US’s second highest rated mini-series of all time behind Roots.
Room, a novel (2010) Emma Donoghue
It’s Jack’s birthday, and he’s excited about turning five. Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real – only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there’s a world outside…
Naming the Bones (2010) Louise Welsh
Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here? His quiet life in university libraries researching the lives of writers seems a world away, and yet it is because of the mysterious writer, Archie Lunan, dead for thirty years, that Murray now finds himself scrabbling in the dirt on the remote island of Lismore. Loaded with Welsh’s trademark wit, insight and gothic charisma, this adventure novel weaves the lives of Murray and Archie together in a tale of literature, obsession and dark magic.
The Women’s Room (1978) Marilyn French
A landmark in feminist literature, The Women’s Room is a biting social commentary of a world gone silently haywire. Set in 1950s America, it follows the fortunes of Mira Ward, a conventional and submissive young woman in a traditional marriage and her gradual feminist awakening.’They said this book would change lives – and it certainly changed mine’ (Jenni Murray); ‘an intense and wonderful experience. It is in my DNA’ (Kirsty Wark); ‘It took the lid off a seething mass of women’s frustrations, resentments and furies; it was about the need to change things from top to bottom; it was a declaration of independence’ (The Observer)
Old Filth (2004) Jane Gardam
Old Filth was a ‘child of the raj’. His earliest memories are of his amah, a teenage Malay girl – not of his mother who is dead, nor his father who can’t cope. But very soon he is torn away from the only person who loves him, and sent to be educated at ‘Home’, where he is boarded out with strangers…What is the terrible secret that the children shared? What exactly happened at the farmhouse in the Lake District from which Filth is rescued by ‘Sir’ whose ‘outfit’ is one of the oddest schools in England?
Jamaica Inn (1936) Daphne du Maurier
Stark and forbidding, Jamaica Inn stands alone on bleak Bodmin Moor, its very walls tainted with corruption. Young Mary Yellan soon learns of her uncle Joss Merlyn’s strange trade here – but does he deal in blacker secrets still? Du Maurier was inspired to write her novel when, having gone horse riding on the moors, she became lost in thick fog and sought refuge at the inn in 1930. Whilst recovering from her ordeal, the local rector is supposed to have entertained her with ghost stories and tales of smuggling.
Her Fearful Symmetry (2010) Audrey Niffenegger
Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers- normal, at least, for identical mirror twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cosy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didnt know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin …
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (2010) Patricia Duncker
New Year’s Day, 2000. Hunters on their way home through a forest stumble upon a half-circle of dead bodies lying in the freshly fallen snow. A nearby holiday chalet contains the debris of a seemingly ordinary Christmas: champagne, decorations, presents for the dead children. In the chalet is a strange leather-bound book, written in code which draws us into a world of complex family ties, ancient cosmic beliefs and seductive, disturbing music.
Wetlands (2009) Charlotte Roche (trans. Tim Mohr)
With its jaunty dissection of the sex life and the private grooming habits of the novel’s 18-year-old narrator Helen, the book is a headlong dash through every crevice and byproduct of its narrator’s body and mind. Graphic, brutal and scatological, it has attracted huge hype (when the novel was launched in Germany, audience members reportedly fainted at readings), and has been alternately hailed as a taboo-shattering act of feminism and dismissed as cleverly marketed pornography.
Broken (2009) Karin Fossum
A writer wakes one night to find a strange man in her bedroom. He is a character she has invented, but not yet used, and so desperate is he to have his story told that he has resorted to breaking into her house. She creates Alvar Eide, a quiet, middle-aged man whose life is carefully designed to avoid surprise, but when a young heroin addict comes into the gallery where he works, Alvar’s life is changed forever and his inventor realises that she cannot control the character she has created. This superb novel from Norwegian “Queen of Crime” Fossum plays with the boundaries of fact and fiction.
Year of the Flood (2009) Margaret Atwood
Atwood’s latest novel covers the same time period as ‘Oryx and Crake’, and extends beyond it. The setting is an unnamed city in a future dominated by powerful corporations and genetically engineered animals. A plague has wiped out most of humanity, leaving only a few survivors – most of whom were members of the Christain-ecological cult, God’s Gardeners. The novel tells the story of two survivors; their histories with the Gardeners, and the trials and tribulations of their existence post-plague.
