Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

As predicted we all turned up with our different publications of this classic book and Vanessa's beautifully illustrated version, a childhood treasure belonging to her daughter, was the most stunning.

Everyone loved this book, expect me! I found it sickly sweet and far too perfect, too moralistic and too obvious. I didn't even finish it. Sara understood my point of view. She had read part of the story while ill (with flu) and enjoyed it but found that, on recovery, it was a little less enjoyable.

Despite my complete lack of 'joie de vivre' this book was a hugely popular choice among the rest of our group. It takes you right back to childhood (if you happened to read it way back then). It is an undemanding, un-contentious, light read, insight to American middle class women during the Revolution.

Jo is, without doubt, the Ashendon Book Group favourite character.

Our big question was: did Laurie marry Jo or Meg or who? we were split and the answer (apparently) will be found on reading the sequels: Little Men and Good Wives (for which there was great enthusiasm but I think my powers of dissuasion eventually won through and they won't be on our group reading list!)

Would we recommend it? A big 'Yes', but not as a Book Group read - it's not a big discussion piece.

Our next book is Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. We will meet to discuss this at Gatehangers on Tuesday 8th May at 8.15pm.

Our Book Choices for March/April 2012

We will be choosing our next book to read on Tuesday 13th March when we meet at Gatehangers (8.15pm) to discuss Little Women by Louisa M Alcott.

The Debt to Pleasure by John Lancaster
Winner of the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel and a New York Times Notable Book, The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food. Travelling from Portsmouth to the south of France, Tarquin Winot, the book’s snobbish narrator, instructs us in his philosophy on everything from the ‘erotics’ of dislike to the psychology of the menu. Under the guise of completing a cookbook, Winot is in fact on a much more sinister mission that only gradually comes to light.

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

First published in 1938, Scoop is billed as one of the funniest novel ever written about journalism. Which says a lot: have you seen how many fiction books revolve around the Fourth Estate?

In this book, which is essentially a comedy of errors, we meet William Boot, who is mistaken for John Courtney Boot, an eminent writer, and is sent off to the African Republic of Ishmaelia to report on a little known war for the Daily Beast.

With no journalistic training and far out of his depth, Boot struggles to comprehend what it is he is being paid to do and makes one blunder after another all in the pursuit of hot news. In fact Booth is so out of his depth he does not even know how to write a telegram -- the main means of filing his reports to the London.

Daughter of the Desert by Georgina Howell

A fascinating story, a heroic protagonist with an entourage of heroes and villains , statesmen and tribesmen. More importantly, as many readers remarked, a window into what could have been done a hundred years ago to assuage the conflicts in the Middle East- but was not done because of the prevalent dismissal of women's abilities and achievements. A tragic history of civilization and a heroic history of an individual.