July 2016- The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

Megan's choice was picked out of the hat for this month. Last year we read about Hemingway's life as a poor starving writer living in 1920s Paris with his first wife, Hadley (see the blog post for The Paris Wife/Paris Without End). She was keen to read some of his writing and we do like to include a 'classic' each year.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro was first published in the 1930s. It is a short story about a man named Harry following a truck breakdown in Africa. Actually it is the shortest read we have ever had for book club at a whopping 20-something pages! The story was a bit hard to follow at first, but all credit to the power of Hemingway's writing- the reader quickly picks up on what is going on. His writing is quite sparse and concise. Megan loved the character's self-awareness and thought the writing was beautifully rendered as death approached.

Those of us who had read the biographies last year didn't have a particularly high opinion of Ernest as a person. One of the things we noticed whilst reading this short story was that we picked up on a lot of things that we had earlier read about. Hemingway writes of Harry: "Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well." His life experiences really did seem to influence his writing, something that often led to tension with his friends and associates in real life.

Many commented that rating this was particularly difficult due to it being a short story. I don't think that anyone loved the story or the character of Harry, but we tried to view the writing objectively. Carmel was glad that she had read it as she has had Hemingway on her list of things to read for a long time.

Scores:
Carmel- 7
Cheryl- 5
Glenda- 7
Kirrily- 5
Kristy- 7
Megan- 8

Average- 6.5

March 2015- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird 

Alison         10

Anna           10

Annette       10

Cheryl         10

Deb             8  

Megan        10

Average   9.6

October 2014- Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Cold comfort farm, published in 1932.

'Cold comfort farm' is a parody of the doom and gloom romantic rural novels of the time. 

The book’s protagonist Flora decides to stay with an extended family of unknown relatives in the fictional village of Howling. What she finds is a group of misfit bumpkins, to which she shows no fear, all with their own set of emotional problems and some looming wrong done to her father, which they all think she has come to right. We never find out what the wrong is. 

Flora manages to use her modern ways to sort the family out and bring them all back to the land of the living. The book is a comedy and most in the group found it so.

Anna        7 

Annette    6

Cheryl      4

Deb          8

Kristy       7    

Megan     8  

Average 6.6

July 2012- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

We've bumped Catch 22 up to July as the other books we had chosen are in short supply. Great I say, I love the book and am loving reading it again.
Not so for some of the readers I checked out on 'goodreads': http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168668.Catch_22. To one reviewer it "was lower on the evolution scale than a wet turd". 

Joseph Heller

Too harsh, they're missing too much of Heller's portrayal of the insanity of war. And who in the adult English speaking Western world hasn't heard the term Catch 22, whether they've read the book or not? High credentials for any author.

Catch 22 in it's absurdity and truth is laugh out loud hilarious and heartbreakingly sad. Set on the Italian island of Pianosa during Word War 2, the central character Yossarian wants anything but to die up in the B25 bomber, he wants his orders to go home. He doesn't have to fly anymore missions if he is mad, if he wants to fly more missions he must be mad, but if he asks not to fly any more missions he mustn't be mad so he must fly more missions. That's the catch. "That's some catch" observes Yossarian, "It's the best there is" agrees Doc Daneeka.
Read on.

April 2012- Dracula by Bram Stoker

The general consensus was that it was well enjoyed. Genevieve, Kristy and I thought that despite some very confusing elements in the story it was a good read.
Phil found it to be not "horror" enough. Annette thought it started off creepy and then switched to the Young Adult version. Cheryl also read the Y/A, which turned out to be different to what the rest of us had read. So they got a slightly different interpretation. Cathy started to read it but thought it might just get too scary. I thought that too at the beginning, it was creepy but after talking to Megan who had the Bram Stoker experience at her conference urged me push on. She had just come back from a conference on emerging technologies and education. The presenter used references to Dracula, and the use of technology in the story, phonograph and shorthand  (I think there was another, I just can't remember at the moment). Megan's Bram Stoker experience even included a fellow participant with the name Jonathon Harker. Very eerie.....

What do you rate it?
Anna           8
Annette       8
Cheryl         7
Genevieve   8
Kristy          7
Megan         8
Phil              2

So the average is..... 6.85  not bad!