I've had to get a wriggle on with my reading this past week as it's the third Endsleigh Salon evening next week and the theme is Prequels and Sequels.Plenty of interest in the recent TV serialisation of Jane Eyre, and with it a great deal of enthusiasm for reading Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.
I read somewhere last week that Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is the book most people instantly say they've always been meaning to read but for me it's Wide Sargasso Sea and at last I've arrived. I can almost hear the gasps out there,"What! NEVER read Wide Sargasso Sea?"
I've just finished it and have a little biography of Jean Rhys on the go too, quite a remarkable writer so I'm pleased to have finally made it.More about that and the evening next week.
Hotel Endsleigh
will be decked for Christmas,which I can't wait to see, and of
course I'll take my little camera so you can all sneak a look too.
Back in November we did Favourite Children's Books and with a pleasingly wide age range in attendance we covered a vast range of reading between us and all came away with plenty more ideas.The book chat was intense and non-stop for two hours and feed back suggests a great time was had by all.
Gradually the evening is taking shape and new faces being welcomed.None of us wants it to be exclusive,elitist or cliquey so any sort ot reading is discussed with interest.If that's what you read and enjoy then that's fine by the rest of us, no judgements or discrimination.Everyone talks to everyone too,there would seem to be no shortage of people who, like me,specialise in Chatting About Books to Anyone.
We've chosen our themes which have all been written on slips of paper and gone in The Box of Themes.We decided to draw out at random and several months ahead so we have Laughter for January, Spooks for February, War for March and Whodunnit for April.The idea is that you read absolutely whatever you want around the theme from fiction to biography to historical to anything else remotely connected and the interpretation is entirely your own.You get five minutes or so to talk about your read if you want to at the Gather Round bit of the evening and that's notebooks at the ready time and this bit will be chaired by willing volunteers.
We've agreed,no newsletters,no reading lists, nothing to detract from the the idea of a complete free-for-all of bookish talk.Brilliant.


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