My mind is very much on books at the moment and like Grace I love my life in the countryside where a good book, a cup of tea and a comfy sofa seems to satisfy my needs more than a trip down Bond Street. I mean how many clothes does one need and yet you can never have too many books; husband with bionic knees thinks I have a book addiction which is being fed by that famous dealer, Amazon. However, and this is a big however, I went to my Book Club last night (a good way to make new friends in the country) and came away feeling very shallow and stupid. We have a different rule for our book club in that you can read whatever you want and then talk about the said book which you then place in the pile for others to borrow……..and that’s where the problem lies because apart from the fact that books I have recommended were being slated by everyone else e.g. One Day, Talking about Jane Austen, I now find that books I recommend are not being picked up by the other members to read and I am limping home with them still in my bag e.g. The Help. (to be reviewed soon but take it from me now it is a great read!)
I have to thank my sister-in-law as she got me out of jail as she recently lent me the book, Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, about a 19th century lady, Mary Anning, who has a love of geology and develops into an authoritarian on all fossil creatures that she finds on the beaches of Lyme Regis. It was a beautiful book and I enjoyed the read but I also enjoyed the other two I mentioned but I kept very quiet and loudly said that I had read the more popular read The Remarkable Creatures! I was very impressed to discover that one of my friends has a geology degree from Cambridge and no less than three other friends have a fascination with fossils even having framed pictures of them in their houses. Am I missing something??? Then, just when I thought that things couldn’t get any worse, one of my fellow book clubbers came out with a weighty tome,The Age of Wonderby Richard Holmes, who by coincidence happens to be the husband of Tracy Chevalier! This is a 1000 page turner about how the romantic generation, of the 18th and 19th century, discovered the beauty and terror of science!! As I looked around I saw my friends all scribbling down the title as they obviously felt it needed to grace their bedside or coffee tables immediately and they could not wait in the queue to borrow the one copy available from last night’s meet up. I then concentrated my efforts on how I could get the nibbles across the room to be passed around to me but conversation was on the Age of Wonder so there was no chance that my hunger for a vegetable crisp was going to get satisfied in the immediate future.
I will still be going to my Book Club as I love the friends and all of our conversation not only about books but also about life, films, families, etc etc and so I look forward to the the second Tuesday in October but what are my friends going to think about the book I have just finished, Eat, Pray, Love which is soon to be in our cinemas starring Julia Roberts. I was personally impressed that I have read a book about ‘finding oneself’ and though not my normal choice I really enjoyed the humour and whilst I am not going to dash off to find a Guru I would like to find the ice-cream parlour in Rome!!!