Book Circle & Pudding Club

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

2009-08-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

A cheeky political satire that purports to look at the events leading up the death of General Zia, the man who ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, and a great target for satire in any case

On 17 August 1988, a plane carrying General Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan since 1977 and America's staunchest ally in the first Afghan war, went down in flames, killing everybody on board. Zia was accompanied by some of his senior generals, the US ambassador to Pakistan and the head of the US military aid mission to Pakistan, all of whom died. There was no real investigation and no culprit was ever identified.

“A Case of Exploding Mangoes” is set in the months before and the days after the crash. Far from coming to a conclusion about the cause of Zia’s death, Hanif gleefully thickens the stew of conspiracy theories, introducing at least six other possible suspects, including a blind woman under sentence of death, a Marxist-Maoist street cleaner, a snake, a crow, an army of tapeworms and a junior trainee officer in the Pakistani Air Force named Ali Shigri, who is also the novel’s main narrator.

Mohammed Zia paints an irreverent and remarkably thorough picture of the complex Pakistani political landscape in the 80s

July/August meeting

2009-07-29T03:59:00.000-07:00

The July/August meeting of Book Circle and Pudding Club is tonight!

Random Acts of Heroic Love

2009-07-03T01:26:00.000-07:00

Random Acts of Heroic Love is a novel with two intertwining threads. The first is a story:

1992: Leo Deakin wakes up in a hospital somewhere in South America, his girlfriend Eleni is dead and Leo doesn't know where he is or how Eleni died. He blames himself for the tragedy and is sucked into a spiral of despair. But Leo is about to discover something which will change his life forever.

The second is loosely based on the true story of the authors grandfather who fought for the Austro-Hungarian army in WWI and was captured by the Russians in 1915:

1917: Moritz Daniecki is a fugitive from a Siberian POW camp. Seven thousand kilometres over the Russian Steppes separate him from his village and his sweetheart, whose memory has kept him alive through carnage and captivity. The Great War may be over, but Moritz now faces a perilous journey across a continent riven by civil war. When Moritz finally limps back into his village to claim the hand of the woman he left behind, will she still be waiting?

Two stories are told of two men who have had love ripped away from them and how the memory of that love sustains them through their lives.

To Kill a Mockingbird

2009-06-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird during a very tense time racially in her home state of Alabama. The South was still segregated, forcing blacks to use separate facilities apart from those used by whites, in almost every aspect of society.

Scout and Jem Finch are growing up in the tired old Alabama town of Maycomb. Their father, Atticus, is the local lawyer and as a single parent tries to raise his children with honor and respect to their individualism. With the Depression on times are hard, and there is no money to be found anywhere in town.

The surface of the story is an Alcottish filigree of games, mischief, squabbles with an older brother, troubles at school, and the like. None of it is painful, for Scout and Jem are happy children, brought up with angelic cleverness by their father and his old Negro housekeeper. Nothing fazes them much or long. Even the new first-grade teacher, a devotee of the "Dewey decimal system" who is outraged to discover that Scout can already read and write, proves endurable in the long run.

What moves To Kill a Mockingbird to classic status is its morality and ability to draw sympathy out of readers as much today as when it was written in 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird deals with heavy issues--racism, oppression, injustice. Amazingly, it is able to handle these deep and sensitive areas without feeling depressing or preachy. Lee accomplishes this by making the narrator a child and allowing us to learn along with her.

June Meeting

2009-05-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

The June meeting of the Book Circle and Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 3rd June

The Secret Scripture

2009-05-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

In a mental hospital in modern-day Ireland, Roseanne McNulty sits; a taciturn old woman about whom little is known. She may be approaching her 100th birthday, but there is no family to celebrate or even confirm her age. Preparing herself for death, she resolves to write a “brittle and honest-minded history of myself”, stowing the loose, pen-scored pages under a floorboard in her room.

In the telling, Roseanne's patchwork of memories becomes “history” - according to her own definition, a “fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth”. But it also becomes “scripture”: a sacred text. There is something spiritual in Roseanne's brave reverence for life, in her willingness to find angels in the midst of cruelty, prejudice and ignorance.

Sebastian Barry writes about loss, broken promises, failed hopes. The setting is the western Ireland of traditional literary depiction - subtle Yeatsian references abound in the novel - but Barry's destabilising of inherited images gives the book a punkish energy as well as fiery beauty.

May Meeting

2009-05-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

The May meeting of the book circle and pudding club will be on Wednesday 5th May

The People of the Book

2009-04-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

When Hanna Heath, a manuscript conservator, first touches the centuries-old Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, she feels a “strange and powerful” sensation, something “between brushing a live wire and stroking the back of a newborn baby’s head.” The manuscript is small, the binding soiled and scuffed, but its lavish illuminations — miniature scenes “as interpreted in the Midrash,” created “at a time when most Jews considered figurative art a violation of the commandments” — are stunning. It’s the spring of 1996 in Sarajevo, and Hanna has been called in to examine the book before it’s put on display.

Woven into the puzzle-solving is the account of Hanna’s romance with the Muslim librarian who has saved the book, as well as glimpses of her disastrous and at times melodramatic relationship with her mother. (“How is your latest tatty little book, anyway? Fixed all the dog-eared pages?”) Readers will eventually learn why Dr. Heath, an eminent neurosurgeon, is so dismissive, but this part of the plot has an artificial feel.

Geraldine Brooks, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous novel, “March,” has drawn her inspiration from the real Sarajevo Haggadah. As she explains in an afterword, little is known about this book, except that it has been saved from destruction on at least three occasions: twice by Muslims and once by a Roman Catholic priest. Building on these fragments of information, Brooks has created a fictional history that moves to Sarajevo in 1940, then back to late-19th-century Vienna, 15th-century Venice, Catalonia during the Spanish Inquisition and finally Seville in 1480, the new home of the artist responsible for the Haggadah’s illuminations.

April Meeting

2009-04-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

The April meeting of the book circle and pudding club will be on Wednesday 1st April.

The Time Travelers Wife

2009-03-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

This bestselling and innovative debut novel from Audrey Niffenegger explores the perfect marriage, one that is tested by challenges the couple can neither control nor predict.

The novel tells the story of Henry DeTamble, a librarian, and his wife, Clare Abshire, an artist from a wealthy family who makes paper sculptures. Henry has a rare genetic disorder, which comes to be known as Chrono-Displacement, that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. When 20-year-old Clare meets 28-year-old Henry at the Newberry Library, he has never seen her before, although she has known him most of her life. Clare's past is still in Henry's future. Henry begins to experience the events in Clare's childhood at the same time that he experiences life with the adult Clare in the present. In the novel, the future cannot be changed, and many tragic events are foreshadowed in the past.

Niffenegger uses time travel as a way of expressing the sense of slippage that you get in any relationship - that you could be living through a slightly different love story from the one your partner is experiencing. And she certainly weaves her plot well. This is one of those books that makes you want to eat it up from start to finish, eager to see how the twisted curves of time will be straightened out.

White Chocolate Torte

2009-03-02T10:37:00.000-08:00

75g butter
225g ginger biscuits
700g white chocolate
600ml double cream
cocoa powder
icing sugar

Melt the butter and sir in the biscuit crumbs. Allow to set for 15 minutes.

Break up the chocolate, add half the cream and melt slowly over a low heat. Pour into a bowl and allow to cool for 15 minutes.

Whip remaining cream and fold into cooled mixture. Chill overnight.

Dust with icing sugar and cocoa powder before serving.

March meeting

2009-02-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

The March meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 4th March

Friends Like These

2009-02-03T07:33:00.000-08:00

Danny Wallace knows how to put together a story, and also how to live it. “Friends Like These” comes from the common crisis of people approaching thirty, asking what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what has happened to their youth. He himself is about to turn thirty and his life has become a cliche. Recently married and living in a smart new area of town, he's swapped pints for lattes and had even contemplated buying coasters. Something wasn't right - he was feeling way too grown-up.

Until - Danny finds an old address book containing just twelve names. His best mates as a kid. Where are they now? Who are they now? And how are they coping with this scary concept of being grown-up? And so begins a journey from A-Z, tracking down and meeting his old gang. He travels from Berlin to Tokyo, from Sydney to LA. He even goes to Loughborough. He meets Fijian chiefs. German rappers. Some ninjas. And a carvery manager who's managed to solve time travel. But how will they respond to a man they haven't seen in twenty years, turning up and asking if they're coming out to play?

This journey not only takes Wallace through a number of journeys, but also a number of revelations and realisations, that actually helps him on the road to “becoming a man”. Part-comedy, part-travelogue, part-memoir, Friends Like These is the story of what can happen when you track down your past, and of where the friendships you thought you'd outgrown can take you today.

February Meeting

2009-01-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

The February meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 4th February

Half of a Yellow Sun

2009-01-07T15:18:00.000-08:00

Half a Yellow Sun is based on the Nigeria-Biafra War that happened in Nigeria from 1967-70. Adichie's writing is an intact narrative and description of the horrors that surrounded those years in Nigeria.

Half of a Yellow Sun follows the lives of five very different characters as they are swept up in rapidly−escalating violent political turmoil. Ugwu is a poor villager‚ employed as a houseboy for the university lecturer Odenigbo. Olanna is a young beautiful middle−class woman‚ who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. Richard is a shy English writer who falls in love with the remote and enigmatic Kainene.

These characters are propelled into violent events that will pull them apart and bring them together in the most unexpected ways‚ testing their ideals and stretching their loyalties to breaking point.

This book will not hide grief or pain, it will not soothe over the bad, and only emphasize the good. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

January Meeting

2009-01-05T14:25:00.000-08:00

The January meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 7th January

The Shack

2008-12-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

The Shack tells the story of a man whose young daughter is murdered and who, four years later, receives a note, apparently from God, inviting him back to the shack where his daughter’s blood had been discovered. He encounters God in the form of a larger-than-life Afro-Caribbean woman.

Mackenzie (Mack) Allen Philip’s, an ordinary American, though one with a painful past of his own, decides one weekend to take his kids on a camping trip in the mountains of Oregon. Nothing unusual – just a fun filled weekend of campfires, hiking, canoeing and enjoying the great outdoors. Until tragedy strikes in the most unexpected way. Mack’s two older kids are out canoeing when they lose control and the canoe flips over.

The reader naturally expects that one or both of them drowns, but Mack succeeds in saving them. Yet while his attention is focused on saving them, a serial killer abducts his younger daughter Missy. As the search progresses, the dress she had been wearing is found torn and bloodied in a Shack, high up in the mountains, implying that she has been murdered.

The shack is a metaphor for “the house inside a human being”, he said, “the place of a soul that gets damaged and twisted by what happens to you”. It is the inner dark place in which people store their hurt, their lies, their addictions and their secrets from the outside world.

William P Young’s The Shack has become a publishing phenomenon in America, and the book is now into its 14th print-run.

December Meeting

2008-11-29T03:30:00.000-08:00

The December meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 3rd December

The Road Home

2008-11-05T03:42:00.000-08:00

On his interminable bus journey across Europe, bound for London, Lev practises his English: 'Excuse me for troubling you.' 'Do you have anything you could give me?' 'I am legal.' Lev's home country has just entered the EU and now he, like so many others, is heading west. His wife, Marina, has died of leukaemia, his five-year-old daughter, Maya, is living with her grandmother and 42-year-old Lev, a former lumberyard worker, now one of Eastern Europe's long-term unemployed, is travelling to London to find work.

Through Lev's eyes, we see London as the incomer views it and it is not an attractive sight: alternately moneyed and poverty-stricken, its inhabitants obsessed by status and success. As Lev's Irish landlord Christy says, with some prescience: 'Life's a feckin' football match to the Brits now. They didn't used to be like this, but now they are. If you can't get your ball in the back of the net, you're no one.' Which is pretty much how Lev, working as a kitchen porter, is made to feel.

The Road Home is thematically rich, dealing with loss and separation, mourning and melancholia, and what might underlie the ostensibly altruistic act of moving to another country to earn money for one's family. The isolation of the immigrant is something that Tremain never loses sight of.

November Meeting

2008-10-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

The November meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 5th November

I Predict a Riot

2008-09-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

Colin Bateman is a fantastically original writer. His plots are endlessly inventive and duck and dive with razor-edged wit and pitch-black humour. Bateman's back with a fast-paced, unforgettable story of murder, intrigue and reincarnation on the streets of Belfast.

Die-hard copper Superintendent James 'Marsh' Mallow, of the Belfast CID, is nearing the end of his career, but he's not handing in his badge until he's nailed notorious politician and racketeer Pink Harrison. Problem is, take Pink Harrison down, and trouble of the full-scale More... rioting kind is likely to flare up.

Walter has a rubbish job but so has Margaret, a security guard at Primark, and when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start and Walter's encounter with her husband Billy leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for Pink Harrison, who is about to come unstuck.

Meanwhile Redmond O'Boyle, professional terrorist and occasional birdwatcher, is languishing in a Colombian jail and his only way out is to kill himself and trust in reincarnation.

Coconut Creme Brullee

2008-09-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

600ml milk
75g creamed coconut
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
150ml double cream
150g caster sugar
45ml water
pinch of cream of tartar

Warm the milk and grated coconut cream.

Whisk the eggs and egg yolks together. Gradually whisk in warm milk, cream and 25g of the sugar.

Strain the mixture into a 1.1 litre ovenproof dish and stand in a roasting tin, pouring enough warm water to come halfway up the side of the dish.

Bake for 45-50 mins or until just set, then leave to cool and chill for several hours until firm.

Put remaining sugar in saucepan with the water and cream of tartar. Slowly dissolve sugar and then boil until a rich golden caramel has formed.

Pour over creme brullee and allow to cool. Serve with mango and pineapple

What Was Lost

2008-09-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

What was Lost won the 2007 Costa First Novel prize and was long listed for the Man Booker and Orange prizes.

One day in 1984, 10-year-old Kate Meaney went missing, although she had been fading, in a sense, long before.

Her mother left, her father died and her grandmother only moved in with her on the condition that she would be no more demanding than a flatmate. Increasingly invisible to the adults around her, Kate sets up a detective agency with the help of her toy monkey and searches for crimes to solve in the new Green Oaks Shopping Centre.

Green Oaks is both the landscape and the villain in the book, a monolith of greed and anonymous consumption. Behind its mirrored doors is a warren of sinister service corridors and bricked-up dead ends, a purgatory for tens of thousands of staff. Year after year it sprawls further, swallowing Birmingham's waste ground.

Jump forward 20 years where we meet Lisa, a duty manager at Your Music and Kurt a security guard on the night shift. One night, Kurt sees a little girl on one of the CCTV monitors, a girl clutching a toy monkey. He is unable to find her though and later crossing paths with Lisa, she agrees to help him find her. Through their developing relationship, information long suppressed comes to the fore and helps solve the mystery of Kate Meaney.

Lisa has her own reasons for wanting to see the missing person recovered: her brother was the prime suspect in Kate's disappearance, and has vanished himself.

Catherine O'Flynn's poignant first novel explores bereavement and loneliness, what it is to be invisible and what it takes to be found. Her prose is taut, and the story intricately plotted and compelling

September Meeting

2008-08-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

The September meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 10th September

Eat your Heart Out

2008-08-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

This consumer book explains how big business took control of what we eat - and why so few of us even noticed. It uncovers some startling facts and stomach-churning figures of agribusiness. It shows how different forms of colonization ensure the West retains economic control over the developing world; how slavery has re-emerged in food production; and how millions are spent on marketing to persuade us from a very young age that we want foods we don't need.

Why is it...

That almost all the processed foods we eat contain the same handful of ingredients? That these handful of ingredients are produced by only a handful of multi-nationals? That some cereals contain more salt per serving than a packet of crisps? That served with milk, sugar and raisins, some cardboard packets have been said to be more nutritious than the cereal they contain?

That there are half the number of dairy farms in the UK than there were 10 years ago? That over the same period the turnover of the top 20 global dairy corporations has increased by 60%? That over 60% of all processed foods in Britain contain soya? That the UK government's Committee on the Toxicity of Food judged that eating soya could have hormone-disrupting effects?

That sugar could be as bad for you as tobacco? That you might have been better off eating butter rather than margarine all along? That industrial processing removes much of the nutritional value of the food it produces?

That by changing our diets we could reduce cancers by a third? That corporations are shaping our bodies, our minds and the future of the planet? Crossing the globe in search of agribusiness's darkest secrets, Felicity Lawrence uncovers some startling facts. Essential reading for anyone who cares about their health and our planet.

August meeting

2008-08-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

The August meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Tuesday 5th August

Labyrinth

2008-06-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

Set both in the present, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the book has two heroines: modern-day Alice, who begins the novel helping out on an archaeological dig, and Alaïs, a teenage girl in Carcassonne at the time of the Fourth Crusade, which was launched against the Cathars on the grounds of their heresy, although it was always in reality a land grab by northern France against the south.

For Alice, the trouble starts when she falls into a mountain cave and finds two skeletons and an ancient ring with a labyrinth symbol, which it turns out that many (often unsavoury) people want to obtain. For Alaïs, it begins when her father entrusts her with one of the three books that are needed to summon the true grail.

Labyrinth is very much a Girl's Own story: a grail quest in which women aren't helpless creatures to be rescued, or decorative bystanders, but central to the action, with the capacity to change history. The villains, in both eras, are also women.

In July 2006, Labyrinth reached 1,000,000 sales of the UK editions.

Mocha Baked Alaska

2008-06-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

4 1cm thick slices chocolate loaf cake
2 tbsp nutella
4 scoops vanilla icecream
2 large egg whites
100g caster sugar
1 tsp coffee powder

Preheat oven to 240 oC, 475 oF.

Cut out a disc of cake and place in a lined baking tray. Spread with nutella, top with icecream and place in freezer.

Whisk the egg white until it holds its shape. Gradually add the caster sugar, beating well after each addition until stiff and glossy.

Dissolve coffee powder in half a teaspoon boiling water and fold into meringue. Cover cake with meringue.

Freeze until needed, then cook on middle shelf for 2-3 minutes until meringue turns golden. Serve immediately.

July meeting

2008-06-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

The July meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Tuesday 24th June (unless the baby comes first!)

Want to Play?

2008-06-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

A group of five friends are creators of a company called Monkeewrench. They produce computer games for pre-school children and have made themselves substantially rich in the process. One of the team, Grace MacBride, decides they need to branch out and they create a game called Serial Killer. The player has to decipher clues from each murder, to enable them to get to the next level in an attempt to catch the killer.

However, one player seems to be slightly more excited by the game than the norm and begins to recreate the murder scenes, right down to the last tiny detail in real life.

It’s a real problem for the police and with four murders in as many days; they are running in circles trying to catch the real killer with the knowledge there are twenty murders altogether in the game. No one is free from suspicion and everyone, including the Monkeewrench team, is considered and the more the Detectives look into Monkeewrench, the more they find they need to know!

A debut novel that doesn't read like one. The Minnesota based mother-daughter writing team of P.J. Tracy (Patricia Lambrecht and daughter Traci) have hit the ground running.

Strawberry Fool

2008-06-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

1 packet strawberry jelly
350g strawberries
75g sugar
500g fromage frais

Melt jelly in 150ml water.

Hull and roughly strawberries and mash in bowl with sugar, then stir in jelly.

When just starting to set, stir jelly and fold in fromage frais. Leave to set for about 2 hours.

June Meeting

2008-05-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

The June meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 4th June

The Book Thief

2008-05-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

The book thief is the alter-ego of a nine-year-old girl called Liesel, whose life history is narrated by none other than the Grim Reaper himself. Now Liesel has both the misfortune to be raised alongside the burgeoning Nazi state in Germany and the good fortune to be sheltered from it by a vehemently anti-Fascist family, the Hubermanns.

It is 1939, Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel Meminger's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is "The Gravedigger's Handbook", left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her foster father, learns to read. Soon, she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

However, all this changes when her father's long-forgotten wartime promise comes to fruition and a desperate Jew lands in their basement. Unwittingly, Liesel finds herself thrust into the front line against the all-too-real hatred of the Nazi state.

The Book Thief has been on the New York Times Children's Best Seller list for over 21 weeks

May meeting

2008-04-27T11:47:00.001-07:00

The May meeting (and first anniversary!) of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 7th May

Mercy

2008-03-31T07:41:00.000-07:00

What would you do for someone you love? Would you lie? Would you leave? Would you kill? These are just some of the questions confronting the characters in Mercy, which follows the path of two cousins driven to extremes by the power of love.

Cameron McDonald has spent his life guided by duty. As the police chief of a small Massachusetts town that has been home to generations of his Scottish clan, he is bound to the town's residents by blood and honor. Yet when his cousin Jamie arrives at the police station with the body of his wife and the bald confession that he has killed her, Cam immediately places him under arrest. The situation isn't as clear to Cam's wife, Allie. While she is devoted to her husband, she finds herself siding against Cam, seduced by the picture Jamie paints of a man so in love with a woman that he'd grant all her wishes - even the one that meant taking her life.

Into this charged atmosphere drifts Mia, a new assistant at Allie's florist shop, for whom Cam feels an instant and inexplicable attraction. While he aids the prosecution in preparing the case against Jamie, who killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy, Cam finds himself betraying his own wife.

Woven tight with passion and a fast-paced plot, Mercy explores some of today's most highly charged emotional and ethical issues as it draws toward its stunning conclusion. When you love someone, where do you cross the line of moral obligation? And how can you commonly define love and devotion to begin with?

April meeting

2008-03-27T11:17:00.001-07:00

The April meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 2nd April

Notes from a Large Country

2008-03-05T04:18:00.000-08:00

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, Notes from a Large Country recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth.

You are unlikely to read anyone else who derives quite so much pleasure from meaningless statistics. If those statistics are about the USA (Bryson's homeland) or his adopted England--or even better, comparing one to the other--then he is in heaven. And it is not only the uselessness of the information that interests him, but also the fact that Americans spend millions of dollars and hours each year collecting such data together.

Reading Bill Bryson is not a spectator sport...you are invited-- in fact, compelled--to marvel at how the nation that "has the largest economy, the most comfortably off people, the best research facilities, many of the finest universities and think-tanks, and more Nobel Prize winners than the rest of the world put together" could be the same nation where "13 per cent of women...cannot say whether they wear their tights under their knickers or over them. That's something like 12 million women walking around in a state of chronic foundation garment uncertainty."

March meeting

2008-02-27T12:29:00.000-08:00

The March meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 5th March.

Case Histories

2008-02-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Case Histories continues a winning streak for Kate Atkinson which began when her impressive novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the Whitbread First Novel Award.

The protagonist here is a former police inspector who now makes a living as a private investigator. Jackson Brodie is making ends meet in a sweaty Cambridge summer and trying to deal with his own failed marriage. But if his life is adrift, perhaps Brodie can justify his existence via his belief that he can do some good for the people he encounters in his job. But he is to find that he will be irrevocably changed by those he is trying to help.

The scene is set in Cambridge, with three case histories from the past: A young child who mysteriously disappeared from a tent in her back garden; An unidentified man in a yellow jumper who marched into an office and slashed a young girl through the throat; and a young woman found by the police sitting in her kitchen next to the body of her husband, an axe buried in his head.

More than a decade later, private detective Jackson Brodie gets involved investigating some aspect of all three cases. As he delves further into each one, he uncovers family secrets perhaps better left behind unopened doors. As he starts his investigations Jackson has the sinister feeling that someone is following him. As he begins to unearth secrets that have remained hidden for many years, he is assailed by his former wife's plan to take his young daughter away to live in New Zealand, and his stalker becomes increasingly malevolent and dangerous. In digging into the past Jackson seems to have unwittingly threatened his own future.

Case Histories is essentially a balancing act, with evil and ignorance stacked opposite truth and healing.

February Meeting

2008-02-01T11:31:00.000-08:00

The February meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 6th February.

Memory Keepers Daughter

2008-01-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

Award-winning writer Kim Edwards's The Memory Keeper's Daughter is a brilliantly crafted family drama that explores every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you?

The book opens with a pivotal moment, one that changes the lives of all its characters forever. Forced to deliver his own twins in a snow storm, Dr. David Henry sees at once that while his son is healthy, his daughter has Down syndrome. He makes a split second decision to send his daughter to an institution; meaning to spare his wife what he imagines will be years of grief, he tells her that their daughter died. His nurse can’t leave the infant, however. Instead, she flees with her to Pittsburgh, where she raises the girl as her own.

With the ethical dilemma and family drama at its heart, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” is appealing to readers who want a rich and deeply moving page turner and something to discuss in their reading groups. It captures the way life takes unexpected turns and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets burst into the open. It is an astonishing tale of redemptive love.

January Meeting

2008-01-06T03:14:00.000-08:00

The January meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 9th January.

Skipping Christmas

2007-12-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

John Grisham, who wrote The Firm and A Time To Kill has written something a little lighter and brighter for the Christmas season, and his story begins with Luther and Nora Krank…

Luther, having reviewed his meticulous records, has realized his family spent over $6000 on Christmas last year. Determined to make this year different, he takes advantage of his daughter Blair’s departure for a Peruvian Peace Corps assignment to float an idea to his wife, Nora. The Krank family should skip Christmas this year. Initially horrified, Nora resists, but Luther wears her down with visions of saved money, a cruise to some tropical islands instead, and as he mentions repeatedly, "You’re right. It won’t be the same without Blair here anyway."

The Kranks’ friends, neighbors and acquaintances are aghast at their decision. No big Frosty on the roof, in keeping with the rest of the block? No Christmas Eve holiday party? No contributions to holiday calendars and toy drives from the police and fire departments? Luther Krank is firm in his decision to skip Christmas, but it’s all he can do to keep Nora from falling out of step with him. The final straw comes Christmas Eve; while the Kranks are packing for their cruise, a phone call from Blair brings a wholly unintended and unexpected turn of events for the Kranks this Christmas.

Apple-Maple Pandowdy

2007-12-05T13:03:00.000-08:00

700g bramley apples
1tsp cinnamon
2tbsp sugar
4tbsp maple syrup
50g caster sugar
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
75g butter

topping:

110g plain flour
1/2tsp cinnamon1/2tsp nutmeg
2tsp bakingpowder
25g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 oC.

Butter an ovenproof dish and place apple wedges into it with cinnamon and sugar, pour over maple syrup.

Cover with foil and bake for 20-25 mins until apples are slightly soft.

Sift flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and baking powder into bowl and add sugar.

Beat egg, milk and vanilla in another bowl then slowly add to flour mixture, stirring all the time.

Stir in maple syrup and pour over apples, covering completely. Cook uncovered for 20-25 mins until golden and firm. Dust with icing sugar

December Meeting

2007-12-05T10:00:00.001-08:00

The December meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 5th December.

The Kite Runner

2007-11-11T02:27:00.000-08:00

An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present.

Khaled Hosseini's stunning debut novel The Kite Runner follows a young boy, Amir, as he faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Their friendship is a complex tapestry of love, loss, privilege, and shame.

Striving to be the son his father always wanted, Amir takes on the weight of living up to unrealistic expectations and places the fate of his relationship with his father on the outcome of a kite running tournament, a popular challenge in which participants must cut down the kites of others with their own kite. Amir wins the tournament. Yet just as he begins to feel that all will be right in the world, a tragedy occurs with his friend Hassan in a back alley on the very streets where the boys once played. This moment marks a turning point in Amir's life—one whose memory he seeks to bury by moving to America. There he realizes his dream of becoming a writer and marries for love but the memory of that fateful day will prove too strong to forget. Eventually it draws Amir back to Afghanistan to right the wrongs that began that day in the alley and continued in the days, months, and years that followed.

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption, and it is also about the power of fathers over sons-their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

November Meeting

2007-10-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

The November meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 7th November.

A Place Called Here

2007-09-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

A fantasy, set in the modern day, about where things go when they are lost.

Since Sandy Shortt's childhood schoolmate disappeared twenty years ago, Sandy has been obsessed with missing things. Finding becomes her goal - whether it's the odd sock that vanished in the washing machine, the car keys she misplaced in her rush to get to work or the graver issue of finding the people who vanish from their lives. Sandy dedicates her life to finding these missing people, offering devastated families a flicker of hope.

Jack Ruttle is one of those desperate people. It's been a year since his brother, Donal vanished into thin air and the sleepless nights and frantic days aren't getting any easier. Thinking Sandy Shortt could well be the answer to his prayers, he embarks on a quest to find her. But, when Sandy goes missing too, her search ends when she stumbles upon the place - and people - she's been looking for all of her life. A world away from her loved ones and the home she ran from for so long, Sandy soon resorts to her old habit again, searching. Though this time, she is desperately trying to find her way home!

Before embarking on her writing career, Cecelia completed a degree in journalism and media studies. PS, I Love You is Cecelia's first novel and rights to it have already been sold worldwide, including in the United States. A film adaptation is currently in pre-production with Warner Brothers. Cecilia also happens to be the daughter of the Irish Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern.

October Meeting

2007-09-23T02:04:00.000-07:00

The October meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 3rd October.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

2007-09-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is the first novel ever written for children about the Holocaust. However, the word Holocaust is never mentioned. When you start to read this book, you go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy called Bruno.

Bruno lives in Germany during World War II. He knows nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country. His dad is a soldier and when he gets a new, more important, job, Bruno and his family move to a new home at a place called Out-With. But when Bruno gets there he's homesick. His new home is smaller, full of soldiers and there is no-one to play with. And he is forbidden to explore.

But his curiosity becomes too much and so he investigates his new home and meets Shmuel, who lives on the other side of the fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas. Although Bruno comes from a Nazi family and Shmuel is Jewish, they become friends and meet at the same spot and talk whenever they can.

As a result Bruno learns more about where he lives, how other people live and the effect of the war.

Chocolate Brioche Pudding

2007-09-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

1 small brioche loaf
85g melted butter
1/2 jar apricot jam
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
300ml milk
300ml double cream
85g sugar
200g chocolate chunks
50g flaked almonds

Set oven to 150 oC

Cube brioche and layer on bottom of oven-proof dish. Drizzle over half the melted butter.

Spread with jam, layer more brioche and drizzle the remaining butter.

Mix eggs, milk, cream, vanilla and sugar and pour over the brioche, leaving to soak for 30 minis.

Sprinkle with chocolate and almonds and bake for 30 mins until golden and risen.

September Meeting

2007-08-24T02:24:00.000-07:00

The September meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesdayday 5th September.

The Jane Austen Book Club

2007-07-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Jane Austen Book Club is built around the six-member Central Valley/River City all-Jane-Austen-all-the-time book club, organized by Jocelyn, an unapologetic arranger of other people's lives.

The six people meet once a month to discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people but over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen and a couple of them even fall in love.

The six Austen novels are the bones of this book. Club members tackle one a month. As we read along, we meet Jocelyn's friends: fiftysomething Sylvia, who is recovering from her husband's midlife decampment; Sylvia's daughter, sensitive Allegra, who is in her own turmoil after a lesbian lover's betrayal; Bernadette, who is 67 going on 17 and is still collecting men; and Prudie, 28, the high school French teacher who has never quite gotten to France. Most intriguing is Grigg, the Knightley/Darcy stand-in, an offbeat 40-ish hero possibly "suitable," in Austenesque parlance, for someone in the group.

August Meeting

2007-07-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

The August meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Monday 30th July.

The Island

2007-06-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

The island of Spinalonga lies off the north coast of Crete and between 1903 and 1957, was Greece’s main leper colony. That much is fact. The remainder of Victoria Hislop’s debut novel, entitled simply The Island, is fiction.

It’s the story of Eleni, her husband Georgiou and her daughters Anna and Maria – the family that Sofia, who now lives in England, never speaks of. However, when her daughter Alexis decides to visit Crete, Sofia gives her a letter to take to her old friend Fotini, promising that through her, Alexis will learn about the past.

The story starts with a young Londoner, Alexis Fielding, preparing to go on holiday. She’s at a questioning stage in her life, mid twenties, pondering her future with her long term boyfriend whilst about to embark on an already planned holiday with him and also intrigued by her mother Sofia’s obvious unwillingness to discuss much about her childhood upbringing in her native Crete.

So she sets off on this already arranged holiday with her soon to be dumped boyfriend. In the second week, she decides to leave him to his own devices and drives off to Plaka, where she easily finds the little taverna run by Fotini and her family and is welcomed to stay. In her letter to Fontini, Alexis’s mother has asked her to explain her family’s history to her daughter as she feels unable to herself. Alexis takes up Fontini’s offer to stay with them for a few days and so we are taken back in time while the story of Alexis’s great grandmother, grandmother and mother is revealed.

July Meeting

2007-06-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

The July meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 27th June.

The Ivy Chronicles

2007-06-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

When Ivy Ames, a high-powered Wall Street executive, comes home to find her unemployed husband in bed with the wife of the traitor who's just taken her job, she decides a drastic and swift change is in order, Now jobless, husbandless, apartmentless--and even a bit clueless--she must find a way to put her life back together and take care of herself and her two young daughters.

Down on her luck and with surprisingly little money left, she opens a business consulting with parents of toddler-aged children who dream of attending New York City's most prestigious kindergartens. And oh, the misadventures that follow! From the self-important Stu who thinks his pampered kid is the next Einstein to the lesbian mothers raising a talented disabled African-American little boy they adopted ("the triple crown of diversity that every school would covet"), Ivy's clients run the gamut.

Her efforts to start this new business, embark on two teetering romances, tend to her own children, and find a new way in the world makes for a hilarious, over-the-top read. What begins as a business move born of pure financial desperation turns into a woman's quest to reinvent herself, and in the process expose the unbelievably preposterous underbelly of Manhattan's elite private school admissions process ...for five year olds.

Based on the author’s experiences, it’s a real eye-opener to the wheeling and dealing of well-heeled New Yorkers as they battle to place their four-year olds in the best private kindergartens! It’s an astute hoot. Really poking at the lengths people will go to be seen to be socially elite, all bound round a charming romance in a nice easy read.

June Meeting

2007-05-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

The June meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 6th June.

A Spot of Bother

2007-05-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon is the author's second novel, following The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. In A Spot of Bother, George Hall is convinced that the eczema on his thigh is cancer and is unable to deal with his daughter's wedding, his wife's affair, and his son's homosexuality. Funny and perceptive, if not uplifting, Haddon's biggest accomplishment is writing something completely different from Curious Incident, and writing it well.

George Hall, having just retired in Peterborough, is out buying a suit at Allders. He spots a lesion on his hip, decides he must have cancer, and even after his doctor tells him it's eczema, he realises there can only be one solution: "He would have to kill himself." He says nothing about it to his wife Jean, herself a little annoyed that George's retirement makes it more difficult to carry on her affair with George's former colleague, David. George and Jean's daughter Katie, meanwhile, has just announced she's getting married to Ray, of whom everyone in the family disapproves ("Katie spoke French. Ray read biographies of sports personalities") - not least Katie's gay brother Jamie, who is having problems of his own. He neglects to invite boyfriend Tony to the upcoming wedding, thinking Tony won't be comfortable, but Tony takes umbrage and walks out.

Ray grows concerned that Katie only loves him for his house and his ability to be a good father to her son Jacob. Katie wonders if he might be right. George starts having terrible panic attacks and, after finding David and Jean in bed together, is driven into complete breakdown. Overwhelmed by a fear of dying, he tries to cut off the lesion with a pair of scissors and nearly bleeds to death.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon is dark, but is written so that it does not require too much concentration, as some literary novels do. With short chapters and a third person viewpoint that moves between all the characters in the Hall family, Haddon keeps the pages turning as readers are drawn deeper into the family's problems.

Blueberry Trifle

2007-04-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

1 ready made all-butter Madeira cake, cut into cubes
1 bottle white wine (although only 6tbsp needed for recipe!)
4tbsp elderflower cordial
3tbsp blueberry jam
500g carton fresh custard
284ml carton double cream
125g blueberries
1tbsp pistachio nuts, roughly chopped

Jam the cake cubes together and put into a large glass serving bowl. Mix the 6tbsp wine with 2tbsp cordial and pour over the cake.

Pour the custard over the top of the cake. Whip the cream into soft peaks, fold in the remaining cordial and half the blueberries.

Cover and chill overnight or for at least 1 hour. Drink remaining white wine.

Just before serving, sprinkle with remaining blueberries and chopped nuts.

First Meeting

2007-04-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

The first meeting of the Book Circle & Pudding Club will be on Wednesday 2nd May

Welcome

2007-04-10T13:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the site of the Book Circle and Pudding Club.

We are a small group who meet together on the first Wednesday in every month to chat about a book we've all read together and enjoy dessert.

Each 'member' takes it in turn to suggest a book to read and to bring a pudding. Further details of books and puddings will be posted in due course!