This Book Will Save Your Life - June Book Club

Firstly we discussed the new books chosen for the end of 2010, these are:

October - The Heretic's Daughter - Kathleen Kent
November - Sacred Hearts - Sarah Dunant
December - To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee

We also discussed ideas for the Christmas meeting which will be on 16th December to avoid being between Christmas and New Year. The following ideas were put forward - pot-luck food in the meeting, a secret santa with a book theme, an extra meeting in the New Year at a different location. Discussion of book of the month followed on from this discussion.

Everyone saw the book as not very plot driven, some people liked this driftiness whereas others felt a little adrift with it. It was thought that maybe the whole thing was just a dream because it felt so disjointed and some of the elements were very odd and almost dreamlike or nightmarish.

Everyone felt that the book had a smooth easy-to-read style, we wondered whether it was like this because the author was female. However, a lot of people were initially put off by the self-help style or the title, although the donuts on the front cover of some editions helped draw us in a little.

We discussed whether we felt that people were taking advantage of Richard, or whether they showed their gratitude to him enough when he helped them. We were particularly concerned with how Cynthia behaved towards Richard and whether she should have accepted everything she did from him. It was felt that although Richard didn't get any money or gifts in response to his original gifts maybe people repaid him in friendship.

There was a bit of a split over the ending of the book with some readers thinking that Richard had finally managed to become a better person, while others felt a little nervous at his precarious position at the very end. We discussed whether Richard would go back to his wife, or his original house, or do something completely different after the book ended.

There was a 50/50 split between the group as to whether they would recommend the book to friends or not. This was also reflected in the marking out of 10 with 7 being the overall score but there was a large gap between the high and low marks.