Members of the book group can get a discount of 20% on all Blue Lounge Book Group titles at Borders Teesside with their membership. Middlesbrough Libraries also have copies of the books
So Many Ways to Begin, Jon McGregor
Thurs 24th July 6.30pm
David Carter cannot help but wish for more: that his wife Eleanor would be the sparkling girl he once found so irresistible; that his job as a museum curator could live up to the promise it once held; that his daughter’s arrival could have brought him closer to Eleanor. But a few careless words spoken by his mother’s friend have left David restless with the knowledge that his whole life has been constructed around a lie.
Buy this book from Amazon or better yet, buy it from your local independent bookshop.
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Tuesday 30th September
The sweeping novel from the author of ‘Purple Hibiscus’, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Award.
The three main characters lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.
Buy this book from Amazon or better yet, buy it from your local independent bookshop.
The Giro Playboy, Michael Smith
Tuesday 28th October
The Giro Playboy” recounts the (mis)adventures of a delusional drifter and his wanderings from the north-east to London (where the streets are paved with gold), and on to Brighton and the badlands of Essex. Along the way, he falls in love, drinks a lot of beer, eats too many sweets, ponders the meaning of life on the dole, and gets admitted to hospital for a painful condition - all the time measuring his life in cigarettes. An utterly charming miniature picaresque and a portrait of a life blissfully unmoored, “The Giro Playboy” is a 21st century beat classic in the making.
Buy this book from Amazon or better yet, buy it from your local independent bookshop.
The Taxi Driver’s Daughter, Julia Darling
Tuesday 25th November
It is late December and fifteen year old Caris is trying to hang an angel on a Christmas tree in a terraced street in Newcastle upon Tyne. She is interrupted by the arrival of the police who have come to the house to announce that her mother, Louise, has been caught stealing shoes in a department store in town. Caris’s father Mac, a taxi driver, struggles to keep the family together as Christmas looks set for disaster, especially when Louise’s drunken, dishevelled mother moves in.
Julia Darling tells the story of a family on the verge of collapse, caught between the escape they crave and the imperfect reality that seems to be their lot. It is a poignant and brilliantly vivid tale, told with great wit and tenderness.
Buy this book from Amazon or better yet, buy it from your local independent bookshop.
Books we’ve read
March, 2008 Richard Milward - Apples
April, 2008 Paul Magrs - Something Borrowed
May, 2008 Marion Husband – The Good Father
July, 2008 Stella Duffy - The Room of Lost things
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