The Bristol Book Club

Remember you only have to read one of the books, there will be a group to discuss each on the night.

At the end of every meeting we vote for two new books to discuss for the meeting after next. It would be great if you could prepare your own suggestions to nominate on the night. This could be any kind of book e.g. novel, non-fiction, biography, but ideally it should be less than 400 pages long.

January's books:

On the Road (Jack Kerouac): A quintessential novel of America & the Beat Generation On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the N. American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" & "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge & experience. Kerouac's love of America, compassion for humanity & sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance. This classic novel of freedom & longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" & has inspired every generation since its initial publication.

Piranesi (Susanna Clarke): Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

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We will be meeting again in February, when we will be discussing The Bell by Iris Murdoch and Small World: An Academic Romance by David Lodge.

Remember you only have to read one of the books, there will be a group to discuss each on the night.

At the end of every meeting we vote for two new books to discuss for the meeting after next. It would be great if you could prepare your own suggestions to nominate on the night. This could be any kind of book e.g. novel, non-fiction, biography, but ideally it should be less than 400 pages long.

February's books:

The Bell (Irish Murdoch): A lay community of thoroughly mixed-up people is encamped outside Imber Abbey, home of an enclosed order of nuns. A new bell, legendary symbol of religion and magic, is rediscovered. Dora Greenfield, erring wife, returns to her husband. Michael Mead, leader of the community, is confronted by Nick Fawley, with whom he had disastrous homosexual relations, while the wise old Abbess watches and prays and exercises discreet authority. And everyone, or almost everyone, hopes to be saved, whatever that may mean....Iris Murdoch's funny and sad novel has themes of religion, the fight between good and evil, and the terrible accidents of human frailty.

Small World: An Academic Romance (David Lodge): British author David Lodge’s satirical campus novel, Small World is the second installment in his Campus Trilogy, between 1975’s Changing Places and 1988’s Nice Work. The novel follows young Irish literary critic Persse McGarrigle as he chases his beautiful colleague Angelica Pabst from academic conference to academic conference. Around this central plot are woven satires of academic figures and ideas, as well as references to medieval romance, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and the academic study of these texts. The novel culminates in a heated debate about the purpose of literary criticism. It was shortlisted for the 1984 Booker Prize.