{"id":195,"date":"2007-09-16T16:45:55","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T15:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=195"},"modified":"2022-03-30T16:56:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T15:56:01","slug":"this-months-book-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"This month’s book group"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never fail to be amazed by the capacity of our species to induce surprise.<\/em><\/p>\n

Two things astounded me so much at this week’s brookgroup that for what seemed like an age when each was revealed I was actually lost for words.<\/p>\n

The first related to something that happened last time out when a member of the group said that she had been reading a novel which sounded very interesting.<\/p>\n

After her summary I mentioned that it sounded right up my street and made a point to note the author’s name and the title of the book.<\/p>\n

So surprise number one occurred when, at this week’s meeting, she produced a copy of the book and gave it to me, saying I could borrow it for as long as I needed. From anyone else this would be generous enough but the person in question usually comes across as one who is slightly aloof, a tiny bit prickly and very formal.<\/p>\n

It seemed such an unexpected gesture of… friendship?… that I was quite staggered.<\/p>\n

To get to the second surprising thing I need to go further back than last time.<\/p>\n

At a meeting a few months I mentioned one of the works I had just finished reading ‘off the reading list’, was a novel by Adam Hall.<\/p>\n

The Lovely S later told me that I’d raved about this novel in a (for me) typically overenthusiastic manner.<\/p>\n

Sidebar:
\nI do like Adam Hall’s style. He wrote under two names -his real identity of Elleston Trevor and the pseydonym: Adam Hall. And he wrote completely differently in the guise of each author.<\/em><\/p>\n

Adam Hall author wrote sharp, detailed, punchy espionage\/thriller novels.<\/em><\/p>\n

Elleston Trevor wrote slightly flowery, very literary, a little over-grammatical works.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ironically one of Elleston Trevor’s novels was turned in to a hugely successful Hollywood film with an international cast that included Ernest Borgnine, James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kr\u00c3\u00bcger and George Kennedy. And how’s that for a top rate cast?<\/em><\/p>\n

So imagine my surprise when another bookgroup member, one who I’d viewed as slightly prickly and a little aloof, told me that she had tracked down one of the out of print novels by Adam Hall from a supplier in London, had ordered it, received it and finished reading it and wished to thank me for introducing her to a work and a strand of genre that she wouldn’t normally have picked up.<\/p>\n

Stunned!<\/p>\n

And then she said that she enjoyed the author so much she would be ordering other copies of his work.<\/p>\n

How cool is that?<\/p>\n

How cool are both of these things?<\/p>\n

And also, how cool are these people?<\/p>\n

Anyway the bookgroup evening -with me sitting in for The Lovely S who was being all academic in Wales.<\/p>\n

Went really well.<\/p>\n

They indulged me and (figuratively) held my hand.<\/p>\n

No-one walked out, no-one threw food at me or booed me.<\/p>\n

So in terms of how it went I’d say it was a moderate success, except…<\/p>\n

Black Swan Green -the book of the month.<\/p>\n

It took a bit of a pounding from the group; I’m not going to do a full review.<\/p>\n

I’ll just say that the consensus of opinion was that Black Swan Green was over-long, carried too many bookmarks and could have been written more sympathetically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never fail to be amazed by the capacity of our species to induce surprise. Two things astounded me so much at this week’s brookgroup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}