Book club

As I’ve said before I’m part of three book clubs.  Two as a regular member and one that I run.  Running this book club doesn’t take too much effort’ just some reminder emails really.  It’s at work and the book discussion is only  a small part of the night – the larger parts being wine, potato skins and gossip.  It was established when a group of us all worked together and enjoyed reading but we have now all moved to separate parts of the company we work in so it’s good to get the chance to get together and have a catch up.  Sometimes the numbers are small – the least we’ve had show up is 3 and sometimes everyone comes – 10 for the max!  We meet approximately every 6 weeks and though the book discussions can sometimes be fairly limited, if the other chat takes over, the numbers do seem to deteriorate if the book hasn’t enthralled anyone/everyone so it is the choice of the book that is paramount to getting people to show up!  The worst turn outs we have had have definitely been for the books that no one was really interested in such as Lance Armstrongs autobiography.  We discuss at each meeting what the next choice will be – everyone can offer suggestions and then we just go with the consensus but I’ve found that the best choices are when a book is:

·         Highly publicised – in the charts or various media book clubs like the channel 5, Richard and Judy, Waterstones etc

·         Cheap – so everyone can get a copy again helped by point 1 as these are usually on special offer

Tonight’s book club was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn which is massive at the moment and definitely grabbed everyone tonight – 9 came in total so was one of our best turn outs in forever!  Everyone had read the book (again another miracle) and everyone had something to say.  I personally really enjoyed this book – I love unreliable narrators and the two main characters in this book were SOOOO unreliable.  This book definitely kept everyone intrigued till the end.  Unfortunately it’s the ending that let the book down for me and for others at the group – the final few pages just weren’t feasible to me (but I won’t give anything away!).  I would give this book 4/5 and am definitely going to read for of Gillian Flynn’s books.  Everyone else seemed to agree with 4/5 too!  Finally, just a few pics of what we get up to at book club.