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September’s Book Club Read is . . .

. . .  up to our amazing book club members!!

Each month we will put forward 4-5 books for the club to vote on but we need to get a wriggle on to get a read in for September so this time we have chosen them to get us started!  We have picked five books to fit in with the following genres; Autobiography, non-fiction, fiction, Member’s Choice and a classic must read.    A vote has now gone up on the book club page for you to choose.

The books to vote on are . . .

1. My Thoughts Exactly – Lily Allen

Always one of the more honest and questioning pop stars, Lily Allen lays bare her struggles with fame, success and self-image in this raw and valuable testimony. Resounding with the singer-songwriter’s trademark wit and candour, My Thoughts Exactly is a refreshingly real music memoir.

In the introduction, Allen, 33, says she’s too young to write her entire life story; instead she’s interested in “the things in my life that changed events, upended things, upset the cart.  No detail is deemed too personal in the singer’s affecting account of her rise to fame and being constantly under scrutiny

A brutally honest read that must have had a few other celebrities and high profile people squirming and running for cover!

 

 

 

2. How to Fail – Elizabeth Day

Inspired by her hugely popular podcast, How To Fail is Elizabeth Day’s brilliantly funny, painfully honest and insightful celebration of things going wrong.

This is a book for anyone who has ever failed. Which means it’s a book for everyone.

If I have learned one thing from this shockingly beautiful venture called life, it is this: failure has taught me lessons I would never otherwise have understood. I have evolved more as a result of things going wrong than when everything seemed to be going right. Out of crisis has come clarity, and sometimes even catharsis.

Part memoir, part manifesto, and including chapters on dating, work, sport, babies, families, anger and friendship, it is based on the simple premise that understanding why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. It’s a book about learning from our mistakes and about not being afraid.

Uplifting, inspiring and rich in stories from Elizabeth’s own life, How to Fail reveals that failure is not what defines us; rather it is how we respond to it that shapes us as individuals.

Because learning how to fail is actually learning how to succeed better. And everyone needs a bit of that.

 

3. After the End – Clare Mackintosh

Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. They’re best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can’t agree. They each want a different future for their son.

What if they could have both?

A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.

 

 

4 The Silence of the Girls -  Pat Barker

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the Gordon Burn Prize

When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers’ camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men – but Briseis has a very different tale to tell . . .

 

 

 

5. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

OK, so we realise that most of book club will have read and adored this book but how could we not choose it?!  The most fabulous book ever, in my opinion, made me fall in love with reading again as a teenager and with Mr Darcy, of course!

In case you haven’t read it . . .  Pride and Prejudice is a romantic novel following Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and eventually comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness. A classic piece filled with comedy, its humor lies in its honest depiction of manners, education, marriage and money during the Regency era in Great Britain.

Mr. Bennet of Longbourn estate has five daughters, but because his property is entailed it can only be passed from male heir to male heir. Consequently, Mr. Bennet’s family will be destitute upon his death. Because his wife also lacks an inheritance, it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well to support the others upon his death, which is a motivation that drives the plot. Jane Austen’s opening line–“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”– is a sentence filled with irony and sets the tone for the book.

To vote on this month’s choice head on over to the Facebook page and cast your photo. Voting closes 12 midnight Sunday 8th September to give us time to read the book before our discussion at the end of the month!

See you there! Much love EA Amanda xx

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