It is with bated breath that the Pocket Bookclub await the counting of the votes…actually we are mostly just drinking our wine and talking while we admire Wivenhoe Dam but I like a bit of drama.
First an overall update: Every book read since 2010
The books read in 2017 certainly sway toward the Australian and particularly Australian women.
Female and Australian = 5 books
Male and Australian = 3 books
Overseas Male = 1 lonely book
Overseas Female = 2 books.
The most liked book of 2017 was…Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
The most contentious book was Hades by Candice Fox with an even spread of ‘like’ and ‘not so much’ votes.
The rest of the books in order of preference
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
The Snow Kimono by Mark Henshaw
The Joyce Girl by Annabel Abbs
Black Rock, White City by AS Patric
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman (which I forgot to post about!)
Overall, a great bunch of books – none of them were bad!
It’s hard to pick favourites. But we thought we would try. With the entire list on hand, the most like Pocket Bookclub book of ALL time was…
We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver – but only by ONE vote.
Very close behind were: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Olive Kitteridge by Elisabeth Strout.
Coming up in the next few months:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman
Will any of these know Kevin off his perch? If we voted again tomorrow would the result be different? Probably. It is like being asked to choose your favourite child. Impossible.
Are any of these on your favourite list?
I love reading about bookclubs. Maybe next year I’ll do more of an analysis in addition to our favourites, which we liked doing this year and thought we will make it a regular thing.
But FYI, we read 6 women and 5 men last year, but 6 Non-Australian books and 5 Australian. In our early days Australian women were by far our biggest group but over the years (we are 30 years old this year) the balance has changed a bit. We also did 4 non-fiction books in 2017 which is unusual. We usually only do one or two. (It was the influence of someone who loves biography!). I can’t remember whether you saw my post on my group, but our favourite book of the year was Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. The museum of Modern Love and Black Rock White City were our second and third favourites.
We are doing Terra Nullius next year. I tried to get Lincoln in the Bardo on the list too, but no go. The transit of Venus is a great book
30 years! We are in our 8th year. I hope for 30. I love sitting in a room with a bunch of people who have read the same books. Lincoln in the Bardo generated a lot of discussion for us. Some of us loved it and some of us did not warm to it at all. We read An unnecessary Woman a couple of years ago and I think we all thought it was lovely.