Barter Book Group – books read
We began Sept 03.
2019
January 2019
Theme:the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
February 2019
Theme:Ulysses, Planning our Voyage
March 2019
Theme: Setting sail. Ulysses, Episode 1 (Telemachus) 2 (Nestor) 3 (Proteus) 4 (Calypso) 5 (Lotus Eaters) 6 (Hades) (150 pages in total)
April 2019
Theme: Mid-Ocean. Episodes 10 ( Wandering Rock) and 11 (Sirens) (100 pages in total) and, if you are up for more, 13 (Nausicaa) (50 pages)
May 2019
Theme: Reaching Port. Episode 17 (Ithaca) and 18 (Penelope) (150 pages in total)
September to December 2019
Theme - Molly's Sisters...
Longbourne by Jo Baker; Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris; Silence of Girls by Pat Barker; Orlando by Virginia Woolf
2018
September – December 2018
Theme:the Long and the Short of it...
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales;
Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Raymond Queneau, 2013 and A World of Difference
2018
January – May 2018
Theme: Beginnings and Endings
Muriel Spark, The Comforters; George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo; Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat, Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
2017
September - December 2017
Theme: Great Ideas
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; Edward Gibbon, The Christians and the Fall of Rome; Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince; William Hazlitt, On the Pleasures of Hating
January - May 2017
Theme: Blue
Penelope Fitzgerald,The Blue Flower; Georges Simenon, The Blue Room; William Boyd, The Blue Afternoon; Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind:A memoir of moods and madness; Danielle Steele, Blue
January 2017 – Party Twelth Night Party (at Barter Books)
2016
January - May 2016
Theme: Comings and Goings / Between Two Places
Shaun Tan,The Arrival; Rose Tremaine, The Road Home; Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin; Sunjeer Sahota, The Year of the Runaways; Col Tóibín, Brooklyn
2015
September - December 2015
Theme: Rage against the Machine (Rebels with a Cause)
Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida: Franz Kafka, The Castle: Loretta Napoleoni, The Islamist Phoenix
June 2015 – Party at The Hoolies, Alnmouth
January - May 2015
Theme: Old and New World Gold
Laurie Lee, As I walked out on a Midsummer Morning;Introduction to Spanish Poetry: A Dual-language Book editor: Eugenio Florit; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 years of Solitude; Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist; Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
January 2015 – Party - Howick Village hall Circle Dancing; reading that made an early impression on our lives
2014
September - December 2014
Theme: Russia
Forty Stories by Anton Chekhov; Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita; Victor Pelevin, Babylon; Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries
June 2014 - Party Chinese takeaway and film Yellow Earth
January - June 2014
Theme: China
Peter Hessler, River Town - Two Years on the Yangtze; Dai Sijie,Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress; Jung Chang,Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China; 170 Chinese poems translated by Arthur Waley; Leslie Chang, Factory girls
January 2014 -Party - Dinner at Barter Books
2013
September-December 2013
Theme: Heroes and Tricksters
The Mahabharata, a shortened version by R.K. Narayan; and The Bhagavad Gita; Martin Bennett, West African Trickster Tales; Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur (part); Anthony Price, Other Paths to Glory.
June 2013 – Party - Ship Inn, Low Newton-by-the-Sea
January-May 2013
Theme: INDEPENDENCE: Who We Are … and What We Can Be?
Fitzroy Maclean (with Magnus Linklater), Scotland: a revised history; Kate Fox, Watching the English - the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Alan Watts, The book on the taboo against knowing who you are; Anne Tyler, Digging to America
January 2013 - Party - Howick Village Hall Dancing with Alistair Sinton
2012
September - December 2012
Theme: REVOLUTIONS and what it's like to live through them
George Eliot, Middlemarch; Mikhail Bulgakov,The White Guard; Ryszard Kapuscinski,Shah of Shahs; Sahar Khalifeh, Wild Thorns
June 2012 – Party - Howick Village Hall Music. Singing with Sarah Gray
January - May 2012
Theme: COMING-OF-AGE (Bildungsroman) novels
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus; Bapsie Sidhwa, Ice-Candy Man; Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea; Selma Lagerlof, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
January 2012 - Party
2011
September - December 2011
Theme: Ways of Seeing
Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah; Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle; John Berger, Ways of Seeing; Bill Bryson, A short history of nearly everything
June 11 – Party
January – May 2011
Theme: Life and Work
Charles Dickens, Hard Times; John Lanchester, Whoops!:Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay; Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara; Polly Toynbee, Hard Work; The Gospel according to St Matthew.
January 2011 – Party - Barter Books – Seven Ages of Man(at Barter Books)
2010
September – December 2010
Theme: Journeys of Discovery
Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father: a Story of Race and Inheritance; Salley Vickers, The Other Side of You; R.K Narayan, The English Teacher; Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence
June 2010 – Party at Poppy's house in Newcastle
January – May 2010
Theme: The Italians
Tim Parks, An Italian Education (1996, Guardian Books2001); March 1, 2: Dante, The Divine Comedy: Hell; Carlo Levi, Christ did not stop at Eboli; Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an author; Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972)
January 2010 – Party - Barter Books – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (at Barter Books)
2009
September - December 2009
Theme: Mystery, or Deception
Claire Tomalin, The Invisible Woman; Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent; John Banville, The Untouchables; Ian Rankin, The Naming of the Dead
June 2009 – Party - Barter Books – exploration/discovery (at Barter Books)
January - May 2009
Theme: Food
Nigel Slater, Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table; Julia Child, My Life in France; Bill Buford, Heat; John Lanchester, My Debt to Pleasure; Joanna Blythman, Bad Food Britain
January 2009 – Party - Barter Books – trains (at Barter Books)
2008
September - December 2008
Theme: Contemporary world writing
Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin; Uwem Akpan, Say You're One of Them; Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers; Marina Lewycka,Two Caravans
January - May 2008
Theme: French literature
Marguerite Duras, The Lover; Proust Swann's Way (vol 1 of 'In Search of Lost Time'); St Exupery Le Vol de Nuit (Night Flight) and Southern Mail; Albert Camus, The Stranger; Irene Nemirovksy, Suite Francaise (French Suite)
2007
September - December 2007
Theme: Diaries/ memoirs
Simon Garfield, Our Hidden Lives; James Boswell, Boswell's life of Johnson; Isabella Bird, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains; Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower
January - May 07
Theme: Lucky Dip
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; David Malouf, The Great World; Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard; Khalid Hosseini, The Kite Runner
2006
September - December 2006
Theme: The Arab World
Rory Stewart, Occupational Hazard – My Time governing in Iraq ; Amin Ma’alouf, the Crusades through Arab Eyes; 1001 Nights; Karen Armstrong, A short history of Islam
January - May 2006
Theme: American literature
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn; Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage; Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie; Henry James, Selected short stories; Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev
2005
September - December 2005
Theme: Travel books
H.V. Morton, Travels through Bible Lands; Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar; Ryszard Kapuscinski, Imperium; Homer, Odyssey
January - May 2005
Theme: Five women’s books linked to experiences of childhood or adolescence
Julia Darling, The Taxi-Driver’s daughter; Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye; Sally Morgan, My Place; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie, Purple Hibiscus
2004
September - December 2004
Theme: Light and Dark
Nick Hornby, How to Be Good; Tolstoy, Resurrection; Philip Pulman, His Dark Materials; Gawain and the Green Knight
January - May 2004
Theme: War
Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen; Ivo Andric, The Bridge over the Drina; Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk; Homer, The Iliad; Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost
2003
September - December 2003
Theme: Colliding Cultures
Graham Greene, The Quiet American; Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing; Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia; Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red