Thank you Nicola for hosting tonight especially as you hosted us all on Sunday too – good that you made extra mince pies 😉  We welcome Beth and hope that she’s not been put off!

Next meeting will be on Tuesday 29 January, 7.45 at mine.

With regards to a classic to read in time for our January meeting – here’s 5 suggestions as starters – but please feel free to make other suggestions.  I just had a quick look and there are just masses of good classics we could read – we are literally (or literary!) spoilt for choice and I haven’t even touched on the Austen/Elliot/Bronte ilk. It would be great to have some kind of response this week though 😉

Happy Christmas!  xXx

Tania’s suggestion was Orlando, by Virginia Woolf … A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf’s lover Vita Sackville-West (of Knole), it is generally considered one of Woolf’s most accessible novels.  … 336 pages

Ok no bias whatsoever here – To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee – probably my all time favourite, but don’t let that influence you as I will re-read this at some stage anyway … The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it … 323 pages

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding … compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them—the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories—and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible … 182 pages

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuro Ishiguro … In 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper. … 258 pages

The 39 Steps, John Buchan … He has been feeling bored with London life – until he discovers a dead man in his flat. Only a few days before, the victim had warned him of an assassination plot that could bring the country to the brink of war.  An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the murderer, ordinary man Richard Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland. There, on the wild moors, he must use all his wits to stay one step ahead of the game – and warn the government of the impending danger before it is too late … 100 pages