Unable to break with tradition, the Pocket Bookclub had our end-of-year do at Cormorant Bay Cafe Sadly, the cafe will be closing next month. SEQ Water will not renew the lease. I can’t begin to explain what this means to our local community. But this is a post about books, not meeting places.
As usual, each member was given 5 silver/gold stars to vote for most liked book of the year and 3 red stars to vote for their least liked book. This is how it came out.
One person hated Lincoln in the Bardo with great passion. Almost as much passion as I love it. It did win the vote with 10 stars. I may or may not have skewed that outcome by giving the book several of my stars.
Why so good? Lincoln in the Bardo is a dialogue between a number of spirits or ghosts. The dead must retell their stories to get well and out of their sick boxes. They do not know they are dead. Amongst the dead is Lincoln’s son and the book is set alongside Lincoln’s grieving graveside visits and the civil war he is fighting. To read this book, you must give way to it. Let it sweep you along and forget trying to remember who is who. There are 166 characters.
After the winning book, we had an unprecedented tie. Four books received 6 stars to tie in second place.
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout is a series of interconnected stories, a structure I love and I can tell you from experience it is difficult to do. Strout’s characters are so ordinary and their lives so every day but all the more beautiful for it. This book sits alongside My Name is Lucy Barton as Lucy is one of the characters in the stories and some of us read both books. Strout is the author of Olive Kitteridge, one of my favourite books of all time.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman The book club had complaints about his book. We got them over and done with early in our conversation so we could talk about how much we liked Eleanor. This is no literary masterpiece but it is good fun.
Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak Many people have The Book Theif on their favourite book list so Zusak had a lot to live up to. Clearly, many of us liked this book enough to vote for it, however, we also struggled with it. I think his choice of narrator made the book difficult to read. It took me a long time to even figure out who the narrator was. It is also a brick of a book. Sometimes less is more.
Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton Brisbane is my home city. This book gets points for that reason alone. This is a book about a young boy growing up in a criminal world but it is not dark. It is crazy.
I wrote a blog post about this book and Tim Winton’s, The Sheperd’s Hut which came in third place with 5 stars. I found the books had much in common. They are both about boys who witness awful violence but the covers alone are enough to see they approach similar subject matter differently. Personally, I like Winton’s book better. I like the love and empathy Winton has for his difficult boy.
The voting also shows some dissatisfaction with Terra Nullius and The Transit of Venus. Personally, I think the first book would have been better served by a slow reveal rather than a big reveal. As for the Transit of Venus it is beautifully written but obscure.
There were also mixed feelings about Inga Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers. This book made me feel deeply uncomfortable. This book purports to use historical sources to piece together the first contacts between colonists and aboriginal people. She describes aboriginal men’s excessive violence toward aboriginal women. She sees a dysfunctional society. I don’t think she has questioned her sources well enough. I don’t think she has considered the disruption to society caused by the smallpox epidemic which killed up to 70% of the aboriginal population within two years of the colonists’ arrival. I think she affirms stereotypes about aboriginal people. I don’t think she saw past her own assumptions. I think we should all move on from this book. I think we are better to read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe
We should also move on from Clive James and his Unreliable Memoir, the least liked book of the year. It is a dinosaur written by a dinosaur. I am not sure about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Read it if you will. Her life interesting. I can recommend In Search of Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson.
Phew, what a year.
Oh I love reading book group top picks. We just have three votes/stars each. We only read one book the same as yours this year, Terra Nullius, and it wasn’t popular with my group either, though I liked it. I must say I thought it was a slow reveal as it seemed to me that things were getting stranger and stranger. There were little things that weren’t making sense. I wasn’t surprised then when the “real” story was revealed. I thought was she did and was doing was very clever but I was the ONLY one in my group to really like it, though not all really disliked it.
Boy swallows universe was our first book for this year so will be part of this year’s voting. Maybe we’ll do a least favourite vote too this year though that sounds a bit negative for me. I think I prefer to just say that the ones with the least votes/stars are the least favourite!
I loved Transit of Venus and am surprised by the lack of interest in it.
As for Unreliable memoirs. Hmmm… is this his recent one? I’m a bit intrigued but probably feel a bit your way.
I’m interested in your comments about Dancing among strangers. I read it when it came out and I remember liking it a lot BUT it is possible that scholarship in this area has moved on a lot? If I had time I’d love to read it again, but I can feel my reading time running out and I need to move on to new books!!
I think you have hit the nail on the head when you say scholarship has moved on since Dancing among Strangers. What she did was amazing but out thinking is broader now. Unreliable Memoirs was quite old. Also a book of its time!
You are diplomatic only voting for favourites!