Hopefully everyone has really enjoyed The Book Thief, it’s one of my favourite books of the past few years and I’m really looking forward to the discussion. As with all books that I love I feel quite evangelical about persuading everyone I know to get hold of a copy and read it, and preferably love it as much as I have. I don’t want #BookTwub to be just about me picking books I already know and love and forcing them on everyone. It’s an opportunity for us all to read and discuss books we might not normally have chosen.
I’ve selected three possible reads for the October #BookTwub which will take place on Thursday 27th October. Two of these are books that have been in my t0 be read pile for a long time. The third is one which I recently read an intriguing review of and which seems to be very popular among Book Groups at the moment. If you have suggestions for future #BookTwub reads please let me know in the comments. I’ll choose three and open up a poll
Have a look at each of the descriptions and vote for your favourite at the bottom.
Marion and Shiva Stone, born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia in the 1950s, are twin sons of an illicit union between an Indian nun and British doctor. Bound by birth but with widely different temperaments they grow up together, in a country on the brink of revolution, until a betrayal splits them apart. But fate has not finished with them – they will be brought together once more, in the sterile surroundings of a hospital theatre.
From the 1940s to the present, from a convent in India to a cargo ship bound for the Yemen, from a tiny operating theatre in Ethiopia to a hospital in the Bronx, this is both a richly visceral epic and a riveting family story.
The narrator of Robert Harris’s novel is a professional ghostwriter – cynical, mercenary, and with a nice line in deadpan humour. Accustomed to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities, he jumps at the chance to ghost the memoirs of Britain’s former prime minister, especially as it means flying to the American resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the middle of winter and finishing the book in the seclusion of a luxurious house.
But it doesn’t take him long to realise he has made a terrible mistake. His predecessor on the project died in circumstances that were distinctly suspicious, and the ex-prime minister turns out to be a man with secrets in his past that are returning to haunt him – secrets with the power to kill.
In 1886, a mysterious travelling circus becomes an international sensation. Open only at night, constructed entirely in black and white, Le Cirque des Rêves delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire. Although there are acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists, the Circus of Dreams is no conventional spectacle. Some tents contain clouds, some ice. The circus seems almost to cast a spell over its aficionados, who call themselves the rêveurs – the dreamers. At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, the enchanter’s daughter, and Marco, the sorcerer’s apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters, they find themselves locked in a deadly contest, forced to test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love.
Please vote for your choice