The U3A book club meets on the third Thursday of each month in Duloe Jubilee Hall at 2.00pm. The meeting (with tea and cake) usually finishes around 4.00pm. Our programme is drawn up by the members in January. We either provide our own copies, on Kindle, or through Amazon, or sometimes the library will furnish us with a set of 12 copies.
We presently have 15 members and the club has been going for 17 years. We still have some of the original members.
If you are interested in joining, please contact Alison Currah on groupsInfo@looeu3a.org
Below is the list of books chosen for this year with a brief summary. Please note, dates and order of reading is subject to change.
February 15: The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes.
About a group of women during the depression delivering library books by pack horse in the Appalachian area of USA. Two poor illiterate families. The interrelationships between them, their readers and people in opposition to the task.
March 21: Elephant Moon by John Sweeney.
As WW2 rages, the Japanese Army enters Burma, and the British rulers prepare to flee. But the human legacy of the British Empire will be left behind in the shape of 62 Anglo-Burmese children, born to local women after affairs with foreign men. One English teacher stays behind to try and get the children across the miles of jungle and mountain to the safety of India. The Japanese are nearly upon them when they encounter a group of elephants with their herders who are their only hope of survival. Based on a true story by Panorama journalist Sweeney.
April 18: The Seal Woman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson
This book is set in the 17th century and imagines the detail of what one of the women who was kidnapped by slave traders from the coastal islands of Iceland and shipped off and sold in Algiers went through, thought and experienced during her kidnapping, voyage, selling, separation from her husband and children and life. This is an extraordinarily immersive read that emphasises the power of stories, examining themes of motherhood, identity, exile and freedom.
May 16: ‘Zennor in Darkness’ by Helen Dunmore
Set in WWI, as U-boats are off the Cornish Coast, Zennor is talking about spies. No-one is immune to suspicion; not Clare Coyne or her shell-shocked cousin home on leave from the trenches; not DH Lawrence and his German wife Freida who have retreated from London war fever and censorship. This is a story of love, betrayal and self-discovery in wartime.
June 20: Bewilderment by Richard Powers.
Theo Byrne is a grieving widower and astrobiologist whose work involves building simulated worlds to help determine whether exoplanets beyond our solar system can support life. He does his floundering best to raise his son, Robin: “my sad, singular, newly turning nine-year-old, in trouble with this world”. Theo’s wife, Alyssa, died in a road accident when Robin was seven, and Bewilderment is among other things a triangular family romance. With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
July 18: The crossing places by Elly Griffiths
It’s about Dr Ruth Galloway an Archaeologist who is called in when a child’s bones are discovered near a prehistoric site on the north Norfolk salt marshes. When a second child goes missing Ruth finds herself in danger. It has an interesting background story and is the 1st in a series
August 15: The Secretary by Catherine Hokin
Set in two decades- the first during World war 2-a young German girl gets a secretarial job working for the S.S. while secretly working for the resistance. Eventually in 1988 her grand daughter finds out about her grandmother’s past and plans an escape for both of them from East Berlin.
September 19: Agatha Christie’s Endless Night and Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel.
If we read them in the same month I think the contrast, or similarity, could be quite interesting. Both deal in the first place with lonely men, if my memory serves me right, and their confused emotions regarding women with a mystery thrown in as well.
October 17: My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards.
This is a true story about two sisters who grew up without knowing of each other existence. One was given up for adoption, and lived a happy, loving life with her adoptive parents. The other was kept by her mother, and grew up emotionally and physically abused, with parents who resented her.
November 21: Light over Liskeard by Louis de Bernieres.
You have to read this book if you live where we live! As life in the city gets more complicated and robots and AI practically do everything Q working as a quantum cryptographer wants a simpler life and so moves to Bodmin Moor to build his own self sufficient haven . Here he meets a number of eccentric characters who already live on the moor. The story sounds dark at first but it isn’t- it is both heart-warming and entertaining.
December 12: The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks.
Talissa has put herself forward to carry another couple’s child, and her surrogacy journey at the Parm Institute initially feels safe and reassuring to both herself and Mary and Alaric, the couple she’s helping. However, behind the scenes, all kinds of subterfuge is afoot. The institute’s director is fascinated by ancient DNA, and he now has a human candidate to pursue his experimentation. When Seth, the child is born, things gradually become apparent that all is not as expected!
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