Pocket Book Club's first book for 2021 was The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams. I am very pleased to say there is madeira Cake in this book. One of our best hopes for any book is for it to include some delicious food and I got to bake the madeira cake twice due … Continue reading Fear for Words
Category: Pocket Book Club
Serious Readers Only
It's difficult to write about Pocket Bookclub's recent read, The Plains by Gerald Murnane. This book requires some patience to read and interrogate. It generated considerable discussion at our meeting, a lot of it about magic mushrooms. I will begin with the man. Murnane was born in 1939 in Victoria and has never flown anywhere. … Continue reading Serious Readers Only
Fiction & non-fiction in harmony
When Pocket book-club read The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman I knew how it would end and I knew which book I had to re-read next. A few years ago I read Zealot: The Life an Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. Aslan describes himself as having come from a family of lukewarm Muslims … Continue reading Fiction & non-fiction in harmony
Where’s the Rakija?
The Pocket Bookclub set a dangerous precedent when we emulated Eleanor Oliphant's favourite dinner of vodka and pizza. It seemed that on every other page the characters in Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife are drinking Rakija or Rakia. This is essentially fruit brandy from the Balkans which you cannot buy (easily) in Australia. We know … Continue reading Where’s the Rakija?
Book-club Sidesteps
Pocket Book-club talked about a lot of things this meeting. Germaine Greer, The Cursed Child, suitable endings for Game of Thrones, hysterical children on school camps. The hysterical children were somewhat of a segue toward 'the book'. The book being Bluebottle by Belinda Castles. This book was chosen by us on the strength of it … Continue reading Book-club Sidesteps
Pocket Bookclub votes again
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, … Continue reading Pocket Bookclub votes again
“I left the baby on the bus and now I’m going to fall into a delirious fever”
Pocket Bookclub is not enamoured with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the monster in the book. This a story we retell and reimagine over and over. In fact, Frankenstein is 200 years old this year. It has captured our collective cultural imagination but the source just did not stand up for us. Let's start with who … Continue reading “I left the baby on the bus and now I’m going to fall into a delirious fever”
Two Books, One Story
There have been tears at my desk. The apparently easy migration from wordpress.com to self hosted wordpress.org has been fraught. Every step has been a drama. I don't know why. As the result, I have two Pocket Bookclub events to write about. Tim Winton's, The Shepherd's Hut and Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton. Lucky … Continue reading Two Books, One Story
Like the book, not the man
This month Pocket Bookclub ventured into memoir revisiting the first book by Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs. It's an old book now, first published in 1981. I am not sure if its age is a good reason to forgive Clive James. Reading this book, you will hear James voice in your head. The rhythm of his speech … Continue reading Like the book, not the man
Bookclub sets a dangerous precedent
A dangerous precedent has been set at a local book club with the serving of vodka and pizza. This inappropriate supper was the result of protagonist Eleanor Oliphant's preferred Friday dinner. While the dinner did not come from Tesco, as the character Eleanor Oliphant would have insisted, it did lead to the question: What book … Continue reading Bookclub sets a dangerous precedent