Book Club - 28.08.13

We had a nice cosy corner of the pub garden this week and it was lovely to take advantage of the warm weather; it may be our last chance to have an outdoor book club as next time we meet will be October (can’t quite believe that autumn is sneaking up on us).  We had a new recruit aswell Laura joined our gang, hoorah!  I’m thinking we need some more men too so if anyone knows anyone please feel free to invite!  Our book that we were discussing was ‘The Plague’ by Albert Camus.  Unfortunately quite a few people didn’t manage to get through it, I think there were only 4 of us that finished it.  One of the reasons was because it wasn’t the easiest of books to persevere with.  Not that it was difficult to read in terms of language but that it was not particularly gripping.

Personally I found the beginning of the story quite interesting as the rats started to come out and the disease began to encroach on the people of the town, however quite a chunk of the middle became quite slow and repetitive.  But when we discussed this it made me consider the fact that by that point of the story that was what life was like in that town, it was monotonous and devoid of emotion because the people of the town could do nothing but try and carry on with their lives and detach themselves from what was going on around them, quote ‘great misfortunes are monotonous’.

Another quote that jumped out at me ‘their despair saved them from panic’ described perfectly the way the towns people reacted to the situation because on reading about the plague my first thoughts were of people screaming, locking themselves indoors and panicking about an epidemic, but in actual fact the complete hopelessness of the situation and being shut off from the rest of the world, watching loved ones pass away, people just fell into despair.

I think it’s a shame that the narrative didn’t invite me to become emotionally attached to any of the characters.  For this reason I found the book less enjoyable than many others that we have read.  Although it’s not my favourite of the books we have read, as always I like the fact that it is completely different to anything I have read before.

This month I decided to be a bit more organised and went through the list of books we have and printed off some blurbs so we could all read what these books are about.  It wasn’t until I did this and read them myself that I got more excited about them because to be honest I didn’t know what half of them were about! After doing this we picked three at random and then voted on the final choice, the result being…..*fanfare*

‘Everything’s Cool’ by Justin Carroll

 

 

Stan has always known how the world will end, and that only he can save it. And he's always known that someone will try to stop him. From his apartment, his thoughts hidden by static, trusting no one and eating and drinking only what he knows is safe, Stan seeks out the man his dreams tell him will be responsible for the apocalyptic 'Project Cassandra'. Faced with a potential spy in new colleague Rachel, Stan's increasingly frantic search takes him down dark paths to darker places. He will have to confront his fears, commit desperate acts and forget all he has known in his mission to save the unwitting, ungrateful world from its destruction. Everything's Cool is a black, paranoid and occasionally funny story of obsession, conspiracies and the end of the world. Stan might be insane, but is he wrong?

My copy has been ordered from Amazon (I couldn’t get a copy in the shops…and no I haven’t tried the library you know what I’m like) so I am eagerly awaiting it to drop through my letterbox!

Next Book Club:

Date: 2^nd October 2013

Time: 7.30pm

Location: As always ‘to be confirmed’ as I have yet to find the perfect venue, most probably the dragon but I will let everyone know nearer the time!

Enjoy!