Category: Uncategorized
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8pm, 10th September – Educated by Tara Westover
Recommended by Barack Obama, Antony Beevor, India Knight, Blake Morrison and Nina Stibbe. Shortlisted for the 2018 BAMB Readers’ Awards. Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because…
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8pm, 8th October – Factfulness by Hans Rosling
The perfect Christmas gift: a message of hope for our troubled times. Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends – why the world’s population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty…
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8pm, 12th November – The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt
Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. He was born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and later lived in California and Washington state. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride – fighting, shooting,…
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8pm, 10th December – Blankets by Craig Thompson
“One of the greatest love stories ever written and surely the best ever drawn.” Joss Whedon Wrapped in the snowfall of a blustery Midwestern winter, Blankets is the tale of two brothers growing up in rural isolation, and of the budding romance between two young lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of…
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8pm, 13th February – Everywoman: One Woman’s Truth About Speaking the Truth by Jess Phillips
“The outspoken Labour MP shares empowering stories from her own life – and she tells them well” puked The Guardian in March 2017. Whilst the Evening Standard said, “Phillips comes across as great company — not just passing the “Would you go for a drink with her?” test but making sure you’d end the evening…
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8pm, 9th January 2018 – A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman
Translated from Hebrew and winner of The Man Booker International Prize (2017), Grossman’s one inch punch of a novel is a “serious portrait of a shocking standup”. Born and bred in Jerusalem, Grossman’s book has been called a “magnificently comic and sucker-punch-tragic excursion into brilliance,” … “There is nothing extraneous, not one comma, not one…
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8pm, 13th March – Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
Recommended to me (SD) with the following… “There are two kinds of biographies: Long ones which tell you every fact about the person’s life and short ones which capture the person’s essence and the lessons of their life. This biography by Stefan Zweig is a brilliant, urgent and important example of the latter. What I…
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8pm, 10th April – Ophelia by Lisa Klein
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts and Clive Owen. “Creatively interweaving fact and fiction, Klein…imagines Shakespeare’s youth in this immersing tale….Will and Meg are distinctly-drawn, engaging protagonists journeying towards self-discovery in this entertaining, inventive story for historical fiction and theater fans.” Check out the GoodReads page here.
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8th May 2018 – The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
The real struggles of a Native American boy make an uplifting story. The title tells it like it is. Sherman Alexie was born a Spokane Indian. He grew up where the book is set, on a reservation – the “rez” – in Wellpinit, Washington state. He was, like his central character, hydrocephalic at birth, “with…
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12th June 2018 – Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham
Francis Saxover and Diana Brackley, two scientists investigating a rare lichen, discover it has a remarkable property: it retards the aging process. Francis, realising the implications for the world of an ever-youthful, wealthy elite, wants to keep it secret, but Diana sees an opportunity to overturn the male status quo by using the lichen to…
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8pm, 10th July 2018 – We Don’t Know What We’re Doing by Thomas Morris
Winner of the Wales Book of the Year 2016 A young video shop assistant exchanges the home comforts of one mother-figure for a fleeting encounter with another; a brother and sister find themselves at the bottom of a coal mine with a Japanese tourist; a Welsh stag on a debauched weekend in Dublin confesses an…
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8pm, 14th August 2018 – See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
Just after 11am on 4th August 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He’s found on the sitting room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both murdered with an axe. It is younger daughter Lizzie who is first on the scene, so it is Lizzie who the police first question, but…
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