Reading Group

A desperately cold day today, the wind chill is severe, it feels more like Siberia than West Yorkhire.

Today was Reading Group Day, it was the second meeting today, we had read Michael Frayns' "Spies". There were ten of us in the group, nine had found it "difficult reading", but eight had persevered to the end. The last half dozen pages being the most exciting! "Perhaps we got excited that we were coming to the end of it" was one comment.

I did not think the book itself was that bad, some of the descriptive passages seemed a bit laboured. The story was about an elderly man returning to a street where he had lived during the war as a young boy, and his friendship with the boy accross the street. I did not know my husband as a young boy, but what he told me about his boyhood frienships and activities, they were of a similar type as in this book. Then the story progresses to Keith telling Stephen that he thinks his mother is a German Spy. Of course, in true Enid Blyton fashion, the boys follow her and log her every move.

The book goes into a lot of emotions felt by the boys, as they struggle to adjust to the change from childhood to adolescence and trying to come to terms with what adults are actually thinking, saying and doing as oppossed to their "half baked" notions of what is going on. Quite nostalic in the remembering how I felt during the war years and struggling to understand what was going on round me, things unexplainded and misunderstood, is the basic theme. The ending when it comes is not what you would have thought of yourself.

All of the Reading Group said, "it was not a book that they would have chosen to read, but were glad that they had because of it's very different writing style. Most said they would not have chosen read Micheal Frayn again". One new gentlemen this week and myself said that we would be interested to read more.

The new book to read this month is "The Book Theif" by Markus Zusak. We shall have to see what we all think about this one.

The Group is turning out to be spirited and lively, all prepared to express opinions, some quite forcefully. Bodes good for it's future.