The official home on the internet of the Darlington Book Group
Thanks to all those who shared family histories and the odd clanking skeleton (hey mine are probably the oddest) in our discussion last night – so enjoyable. Lionel Shriver definitely a hit with this group. For a writer who perhaps avoids intimacy (as do her characters) she engendered an evening of intimate sharing. Lovely.
ps random photo of Staleybridge buffet – surely the nicest railway buffet bar in the country?
Had a great time at the Lionel Shriver
event – she is an extremely cool, smart and funny lady. She was so good at reading her work and also at responding to intrusive questions about her personal life and the one about whether giving herself a man’s name helped her sales. But also at really considering some of the issues – such as inheritance, sibling rivalry, uneasy family alliances and the strange marriage of fact and fiction in a novel. There was even an impromptu bookgroup style discussion among groups in the audience which has warmed me up for the one we will have very soon. Then a nice young lady from R3 stuck a mike under my nose and asked me if there was any such thing as A Perfectly Good Family – don’t get me started….
Lionel Shriver will be talking about A Perfectly Good Family on Saturday Oct 24th at 10.30 am – it’s a free event but you need to book via the Sage – you can do it on the website.
Hope you are enjoying the book and that you can make the event – if so, see you there.
This week I have been mostly eating cupcakes. 
I’ve finished Talk of the Town and really enjoyed it, got lost in this convincingly done world of adolescent boys (yes I know there’s a girl – but one of my qs would be – is she as recognisable as the boys?) The odd thing for me, at the beginning of reading, was trying to hear JP’s voice. I have heard him read his poetry several times and when I’m reading it, he comes through loud and clear. Because this is written in prose, in dialect and is a first person narrative – I think my poor brain was trying to hear JP – and went into melt down. Not a problem if you have never heard JP read as a poet I guess.
Does the dialect work, do you think – are you reminded of Sam Marsden?
Looking forward to our discussion.
A very interesting evening with several closet crime fiction fans outed, and an increase in Kate Atkinson’s fanbase. I think we all enjoyed Case Histories in spite of the gore. And a warm welcome to new members Dawn and Rachel.
Looking forward to discussing Talk of the Town, Jacob Polley’s recent novel: I am already a big fan of his poetry.
Also we have a change to the book schedule, with the addition of Lionel Shriver’s A Perfectly Good Family. She is at an event at the Sage, Gateshead on October 23rd and it seemed too goood an opportunity to miss. Will talk about this at our next meeting.
Jacob Polley
I’ve finished the first book on our list and enjoyed it very much. I read Kate Atkinson’s first book ages ago, and haven’t been back to her work, but I’ll certainly be reading more of her now. The best kind of detective fiction. Looking forward to discussing with everybody on Sep 7th. Feel free to bring a friend along, even if they haven’t read the book on this occasion.
I’m never quite sure about this time of year – is it autumn yet? Something about the darker quality of everything – the leaves seem such a deep slightly bitter green, the evenings draw in sooner. Is my mood gloomier? Hell I’m a poet – gloom is my territory. But as Dora says – the clothes are better in autumn. Yeah perspective is all.
Lovely party – thanks everybody for your contributions – here are some of the books we talked about – but there were lots more. I’m planning to read the Kate Atkinson Dora suggested, and maybe a few more of Ben’s graphic novel choices. Plus I have the Ishiguro on the go. Hope you all enjoy the summer, the books and perhaps another glass of prosecco – and look forward to seeing you all again later in the year.
I’ve really enjoyed the books and the company. 
I’ve got far too many books on the go at the moment – and a feeling that each one is being read by a different personality, which is disconcerting. One of me is reading david Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: this one shows what a master of the multiple personality disorder can produce. Such a range of voices – and as the blurb saysm, six separate “nested” stories. Extremely clever and satsifying, and quite a chunky book so it would take you through a week or two of beach reading. I’m also reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver called Pigs in heaven which I’m rather enjoying. Hadn’t come across this author before, so if you have and could recommend others, I’d be happy to hear. Plus some poetry, a self-help manual and the Dummy’s Guide to Spreadsheets. Then there’s the knitting books ..
See you all soon
I read in a review that Ali Smith’s stream of consciousness writing style was an updated VW. I’m not sure she quite achieves this but then I’m a very big VW fan. In fact I’m not sure how convinced I was by the characters in this book or even particulalrly moved by their plight. Am I just hard to please?
Looking forward to discussing later on this evening.
- a bit different. Well not set in Middlesbrough anyway! Thanks everybody for the fanrastic discussion on Monday night – I thought it was a really stimulating session. I am still trying to think of any other novels set in the Boro but apart from R Milward’s Apples I can’t think of any.
Next book will NOT be Mari Hannah because of publication dates – instead we will read “Hotel World” by Ali Smith.
I’ve read other work by AS but not this so looking forward to it and to seeing you all in June.
Just to reiterate that the book order has changed – we’ll be reading the Richard Milward book in May now and the Mari Hannah in June – due to publication date difficulties.
Hope this is OK with everybody and you can get hold of Richard’s book without too much effort – look forward to discussing with you.
A great discussion last night about “That They May Face The Rising Sun”. This was the quote I was looking for about happiness (Ruttledge is thinking this of course):
“He felt this must be happiness. As soon as the thought came to him he fought it back, blaming the whiskey. The very idea was as dangerous as presumptive speech. Happiness could not be sought or worried into being, or even fully grasped. It should be allowed its own slow pace so that it passes unnoticed if it ever comes at all.”
This seems to be the heart of the book for me and maybe the reason why I enjoyed it so much – learning to take the text at a slower pace than I normally read and letting the flow of words take me over.
Thanks for all the brilliant discussions we’ve had so far this year and looking forward to many more – beginning with a book called The Editor by Mari Hannah on May 11th. Hope this date OK for everybody – I think the one before is a bank holiday.
I am really enjoying this book – but it isn’t a quick read! The prose is so perfect and the characters he creates are wonderful. The sly, slow humour but also the tragedy of some of these lives, so understated. Sometimes, I just stop and read a piece out loud to myself. I’ve never been to this part of Ireland and this book has the effect of making you really want to go there, but also feeling a slight sense of claustrophobia and panic about it. Perhaps this is the connection to last month’s book – beauty and ugliness together.
I hope you are enjoying it and wanted to say that don’t worry if you don’t get it finished – I think it will be just great to take a couple of pages and do some deconstruction work.
Thanks for a lovely evening at the Arts Centre last night – had an excellent time discovering various members’ acquaintance with the Yorkshire dialect via Kent, Bristol and Glasgow! Fascinating stuff. I think this was one of the books that we were all in agreement about – a winner, and a writer to look out for in the future.
Hope we all enjoy John McGahern’s That They May Face The Rising Sun – which turns out to be the last work of fiction by this author before his death in 2006. It won prizes and he is an excellent writer so I have high hopes.
Look forward to seeing you all in April.
God’s Own Country turned out to be quite a quick read once I’d mastered the dialect. See if you can remember what these words mean:
aflunters
blatherskite
chunter
crozzle
doylem
gleg
glishy
bluthermerment
fettle
flowtered
hubbleshoo
mafted
powfagged
trunklements
Answers at the Arts Centre tonight!
Just back from a week in deepest Shropshire staying at The Hurst Arvon Centre with a lot of lovely young poets. I thought I might get some time to read my book – but I didn’t! So hope the rest of you are doing better and I’ll get my head down this week I promise. Have started and am finding my way into the dialect and the narrator’s voice and already intrigued. Rural Shropshire looked lovely all A E Housman and rolling hills – but I’m sure there’s plenty of room for peculiar goings on there too. The kids at Craven Arms station with their stacked up cans of cider, the burnt out car steaming on the track as I drove up to the house .. hmmm. Then there’s the wild life. But it doesn’t look like Emmerdale – the landscape up here has a touch of bleakness that when I’m away I miss. I’m interested in the descriptive bits in God’s Own Country too.
Anybody get to see Slumdog the Movie yet? Have spoken to one bookgroup member who thought the film was great but took liberties with the text.
Looking forward to seeing you all Monday after next.
Happy New Year to everybody and hope you are enjoying Half of a Yellow Sun – a fantastic if harrowing book and slightly shaming at this time of year. It didn’t put me off my mince pies but made me feel guilty and fortunate. Also reminded me of being a child when the Biafran war was going on and the horrible jokes people made about it., which always puzzled and appalled me. Maybe it’s a form of distancing.
I’ve got lots of things on my mind about this book to do with history and literature, the way Africa is portrayed, how to deal with events like war and famine in fiction, ethnic differences and violence. Looking forward to discussing all of this with you next Monday.
Ah the 80s. My Staff Christmas Party has an 80s theme. I have spent far too much time on YouTube watching clips of the Bangles, Human League, the Eurythmics and even Blancmange. It’s weird because I had my first child in 1981 and so the music is a very blurry background – and wasn’t really this was more Talking Heads, REM and the Smiths, with far too much Mrs T and the Falklands. But now I am looking at these big haired girls (and boys) and thinking blimey that looks fun.
Meanwhile reading Black Swan Green and really enjoying it – am thinking about books with a child / young person protagonist (like first part of What Was Lost) and being quite gob-smacked by the writerly skill required to make it convincing. And funny. And touching. The stammering Jason is such an endearing character and also reveals a lot about the world of boys which I realise is still a bit of a mystery to me. He describes it as being in the army. I find this sad but it has a ring of truth to it – or maybe that’s the remnants of the Rememberance Day events still lingering. One thing about this book is that I find it hard to put down and that’s one of my favourite feelings. It’s also amazing to have a group of people I can look forward to discussing this book with. See you all at the Arts Centre in a couple of weeks’ time. This site has an amazing animation of birds:
How is it going with The Gathering? Hope you are all getting into it and enjoying the unravelling of the plot. I like the way the family relationships are drawn – and this is a big family. Maybe I even feel slightly envious of it – sometimes wonder what it would be like to belong to some massive sprawling affair with relatives all over the place you could drop in on. I can see the advantages – maybe the view is rosier from afar. Families can be crushing as well, limiting you to an assigned role which requires a certain level of enterprise and determination to break out of. Feeling sad this week as a young friend of my daughter died. Makes you feel the fragility of everything and the need to huddle close with those you love. Winter coming, clocks changing. But I’m so looking forward to talking about books with you all again soon – November 3rd – not long now.
An excellent discussion at Darlington Arts Centre bookgroup last night with some new members joining. It’s wonderful to share thoughts and insights in this way and to learn more about each other in the process. We talked about loneliness, shopping centres, town planning, fast food, ghosts, childhood, Birmingham – and many other topics. It was a rich and enlightening evening – and slightly quieter away from the karate class! Thanks everybody and look forward to seeing you again next month.
