Swindon IVC Book List

IVC Book Club – books read and discussed to date

	Title	Author	Genre	Comment

Mar-04	Starter for ten	Brian Nicholls	Modern	Light but enjoyable. Some found characters irritating.

Apr-04	Curious Incident of Dog in night-time	Mark Haddon	Modern	Well received and provoked lengthy discussion on subject of book
	Brick Lane	Monica Ali		Varied reaction with some really enjoying it and others finding it too long and/or slow

May/June 04	Brick Lane (continued)	Monica Ali	?	I think we selected two books for two meetings?
Jan-00
Jul-04	The Loving Spirit	Daphne Du Maurier	Romance	Definite thumbs down and a bit dodgy with caveat not a bad attempt for a first book.
Jan-00
Oct-04	The Motorcycle Diaries	Che Guevara	Travel	Only half group had read this. Varying reactions from brilliant to so so. Film more popular generally − perhaps we should be a film group!

Dec-04	Pompeii	Robert Harris	Crime	Again, wide range of reactions from very enjoyable to didn’t get past the first 30 pages − yawn. Blockbusters/beach reads not to all tastes.

Feb-05	Case Histories	Kate Atkinson	Modern	good read, but characters are rather cliché-ridden
	The Queen and I	Sue Townsend		Enjoyable read but not much to discuss!

Mar-05	The Joke	Milan Kundera	European
	Popular Music	Mikael Niemi		Not many people read this − varying reactions from not very interesting to very enjoyable.

Apr-May 2005	Time and the Conways	JB Priestley	Play	Everyone really enjoyed doing a play and reading it out in parts. This was linked to a theatre visit to see another Priestley play, An Inspector Calls

Jun-05	Persuasion	Jane Austen	Classics	Half the group read this book, who all really enjoyed the book − good characters and lots of wit. most probably read it before. I think there was another title, can’t remember what.

Jul-05	Like a Fiery Elephant:The story of BS Johnson	Jonathan Coe	Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction	Both these titles were enjoyed by those who read them (Stuart a Life Backwards currently being serialised on BBC4). The Fiery Elephant book quite hard going though
	Stuart a life backwards	Alexander Masters

Sep-05	Broken Music	Sting	Autobiog	Enjoyed by most, though some found writing style strange.
	The Road Taken	Michael Burke		Everyone enjoyed this

Nov-05	The Beach	Alex Garland	Thriller / cult	Only a couple of people read it − good page turner − quite a lot of discussion around cult nature of book, and comparisons to film

Dec-05	Irish poets (various)		Irish Poets

Mar-06	Around the world in 80 days	Jules Verne	Travel / Adventure
Apr-06	Moondust	Andrew Smith
	Lincoln Lawyer	Michael Connelly
	Arthur and George	Julian Barnes
Jun-06	The Farm	Richard Benson
Aug-06	You Know you got Soul	Jeremy clarkson
Oct 06	A Quiet Vendetta	Roger Jon Ellory
Oct 06 also	Play (part 1)- The Cocktail Party	T.S. Eliot
Nov 06	The Secret Life of Bees	Sue Monk Kidd
Nov 06	A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian	Marina Lewycka
Nov 06 also	Play (part 2)- The Cocktail Party	T.S. Eliot
Dec 06	Readings of Poetry and short stories etc.	Various
Jan 07	The Innocent Man	John Grisham
Jan 07	Shadow of the Wind	Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jan 07	A Spot of Bother	Mark Haddon
Jan 07	The Thunderbolt Kid	Bill Bryson
Mar 07	Small Island	Andrea Levy
Apr 07	Semi-Detached	Griff Rhys Jones
June 07	Brighton Rock	Graham Greene
August 07	Cleopatra’s Needle	Anne Mustoe
October 07	"Purple Hibiscus" or "Half a Yellow Sun"	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
November 07	"Farewell my Lovely"	Raymond Chandler
	"The Naming of the Dead"	Ian Rankin
January 08	"Maps for Lost Lovers"	Nadeem Aslam
Feb-08	Fever Pitch	Nick Hornby
Apr-08	A Thousand Splendid Suns	Khaled Hosseini
Jun-08	Candide	Voltaire
Jun-08	Mill on the Floss	George Elliot
Jul-08	Bearded Tit	Rory McGrath
Jul-08	Blood River	Tim Butcher
Jul-08	Dreams of my father	Barak Obama
Sep-08	The Road Home	Rose Tremain
Nov-08	Planet of the Blind	Stephan Kuusisto
Dec-08	Poems and Stories	Various
February 09	"A Mercy"	Toni Morrison
April 09	The Delegates Choice	Ian Sansom
April 09 (alternate choice)	The Yes Man	Danny Wallace
June 09	The Other Hand	Chris Cleave
June 09 (alternate choice)	Angels and Demons	Dan Brown
July 09	Snow	Orhan Pamuk
September 09	The Help	Kathryn Stockitt
September 09 (alternate choice)	Northern Lights	Philip Pullman
October 09	The American Boy	Andrew Taylor
October 09 (alternate choice)	The Book Thief	Marcus Zusak
January 2010	The White Tiger	Aravind Adiga
January 2010 (alternate choice)	A lust for Windowsills	Harry Mount
March 2010	Right Ho, Jeeves	P.G. Woodhouse
May 2010	The Lieutenant	Kate Grenville
June 2010	All Quiet on the Western Front	Eric Marie Remarque		Rated 8.5/10 and a worthwhile read.
July 2010	Solar	Ian McEwan
October 2010	The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo	Stieg Larsson		Rated 7.5/10 good read, but not quite upto the hype!
November 2010	The Lost Continent	Bill Bryson
January 2011	Operation Mincemeat	Ben Macintyre		Rated 9.5/10
January 2011 -alternative option	Meltdown	Ben Elton		Rated 7.5/10
March 2011	The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks	Rebecca Skloot		Rated 8/10
May 2011	The thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet	David Nichols
May 2011 -alternate	Norweigian Wood	Haruki Murakami
July 2011	The Year of Living Biblically	A.J. Jacobs
Sept 2011	The Channel 4 TV Book club summer reads (8 books)	various
Nov 2011	Our Kind of Traitor	John le Carre
Jan 2012	Middlesex	Jeffery Eugenides		Rated 7/10
Feb 2012 Choice 1	Business stripped bare: Adventure of a global entrepreneur	Richard Branson
Feb 2012 Choice 2	Steve Jobs - The Exclusive Biography	Walter Isaacson
Apr 2012	Pickwick Papers	Charles Dickens

List updated by Richard