Cardiff’s longest running book club
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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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8pm, 11th September 2018 – Larchfield by Polly Clark
‘We need the courage to choose ourselves.’ W. H. Auden It’s early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she’s excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what…
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8pm, 9th October – Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. This, his debut novel, is often considered his best and is the most widely read book in modern African literature. He won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007. A compelling story of one man’s battle to protect his community against the forces of change.…
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8pm, 13th November 2018 – Mothers by Chris Power (Author in-situ)
Casual get together, as ever to review this month’s book: slight difference this month is that the author, Chris Power, will be joining us! With reviews ranging from ‘a daring debut short story collection‘ and ‘more than the sum of its parts – not a clutch of episodes, but a single, unified, many-sided work, best read…
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8pm, 11th December; A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg + Secret Santa
“I-i-i-i-i-i-it’s Chri-i-i-i-i-istmas!” or so yelped Noddy Holder. As such, it’s time for our annual Secret Santa. Pick a book off your shelf that you’ve love, love, LOVED and write a little note to explain why, but don’t sign off: it needs to be a surprise. Wrap it up in the cheapest wrapping paper you can find…
Got any book recommendations?
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