Reading Groups Collection
A Tale for the Time Being | Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad | Things I Want My Daughters to Know | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Toby's Room | To Kill a Mockingbird | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Trespass The Truth About Love | The Uncommon Reader | Back to the List
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
"Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is?
Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you." Ruth discovers a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed up on the shore of her beach home. Within it lies a diary that
expresses the hopes and dreams of a young girl. She suspects it might have arrived on a drift of debris from the 2011 tsunami. With every turn of the page,
she is sucked deeper into an enchanting mystery. In a small café in Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao Yasutani is navigating the challenges thrown up by modern life.
In the face of cyberbullying, the mysteries of a 104-year-old Buddhist nun and great-grandmother, and the joy and heartbreak of family, Nao is trying to find her
own place - and voice - through a diary she hopes will find a reader and friend who finally understands her.
Weaving across continents and decades, and exploring the relationship between reader and writer, fact and fiction, A Tale for the Time Being is an extraordinary
novel about our shared humanity and the search for home.
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Talking about Jane Austen in Baghdad: A true story of an unlikely friendship by Witwit
Would
you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?
May is a tough-talking, hard-smoking lecturer in English. She's also an Iraqi living in Baghdad: dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to teach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls.
Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.
They should have nothing in common. But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all differences of culture, religion and age. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they hatch and ingenious plan to help May escape Baghdad...
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Things I Wanty My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble
When
Barbara realises time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters,
aware they'll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their
side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?
Take Lisa, in her mid-thirties but incapable of making a commitment; or Jennifer, trapped in a stale marriage and buttoned up so tight she could burst. Twentysomething Amanda is the traveller, always distanced from the rest of the family; and then there's Hannah. A teenage girl on the verge of womanhood, about to be parted from the mother she adores.
But by drawing on the wisdom in Barbara's letters, the girls might just find a way to cope with their loss. And in coming to terms with their bereavement, can they also set themselves free to enjoy their lives with all the passion and love each deserves?
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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini
Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry
the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior. Nearly two
decades later, in a climate of growing unrest, tragedy strikes fifteen-year-old
Laila, who must leave her home and join Mariam's unhappy household. Laila and
Mariam are to find consolation in each other, their friendship to grow as deep
as the bond between sisters, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter.
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over
Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sounds of gunfire and bombs,
life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's
endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move a person to
act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a
startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and
destruction.
'This is an energetic and thought-provoking read.'
Literary Review
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A Toby's Room by Pat Barker
Toby has always protected his sister, Elinor, their bond closer than they can
acknowledge. Then comes war, and in 1917 on a French battlefield Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed'. Elinor, an artist now involved in helping surgeons
reconstruct the faces of injured soldiers, is determined to find out what happened and writes to the horrifically wounded Kit Neville, the last man to see Toby
alive. But Neville is in hospital, himself damaged beyond recognition, and he will not talk - until Elinor asks fellow soldier and her former lover Paul Tarrant
for help. But are some truths better left concealed?"
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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em,
but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man
charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult
attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one
man's struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
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Trespass by Rose Tremain
In
a silent valley in southern France stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas
Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic haunted by his violent past. His
sister, Audrun, alone in her bungalow within sight of the Mas Lunel, dreams of
exacting retribution for the unspoken betrayals that have blighted her life.
Into this closed world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy but disillusioned antiques
dealer from London seeking to remake his life in France. From the moment he
arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences
is set in motion...
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The Truth About Love by Jane Elizabeth Varley
Sally seems to have an enviable life. Married to Edward, she has a
two-year-old son and lives in a Victorian house in London, recently converted to
provide a separate garden flat. Yet beneath an apparently happy exterior, Sally
must deal with the legacy of Edward's past: his glamorous, successful ex-wife;
his resentful step-daughter; and Edward's own mixed feelings about the family he
left behind. When Sally needs to escape the strains of her marriage, a chance
discovery takes her in a surprising direction.
Meanwhile, Anna moves into the garden flat. An ambitious TV producer, she has
always felt work was more important than anything else. The an error of
judgement threatens her career and her love life.
As both Sally and Anna face an uncertain future, they realise the importance of
love, family - and of making the right choices...
'Varley does domestic ups and downs better than most'
Mirror
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The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
Had
the dogs not taken exception to the strange van parked in the royal grounds, the
Queen might never have learnt of the Westminster travelling library's weekly
visits to the palace. But finding herself at its steps, she goes up to apologise
for all the yapping and ends up taking out a novel by Ivy Compton-Burentt, last
borrowed in 1989. Duff read though it proves to be, upbringing demands she
finish it and, so as not to appear rude, she withdraws another. This second,
more fortunate choice of book awakens in Her Majesty a passion for reading so
great that her public duties begin to suffer. And so, as she devours work by
everyone from Hardy to Brookner to Proust to Samuel Beckett, her equerries
conspire to bring the Queen's literary odyssey to a close
'An exquisitely produced jewel of a book... [but] beneath the tasteful
gilt-and-beige cover seethes a savagely Swiftian indignation against stupidity,
Philistinism and arrogance in public places, and a passionate argument for the
civilising power of art.'
The Times
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Page last updated: 10th April 2014