The BESH Parlour - good reads and great gin (BYO tasty cakes)

[LaLauraDePalmer]

The Bookish Evil Selfish Hags are popping our Book Klub cherries with The Tiger's Wife...details soon to be sorted.

Ha ha, northey! I forgot about Aunt Fanny in the Five books. But I'm just the wifey. I'll have to consult with Uncle Quentin. (Only that will have to wait as he is shut in his study doing top secret important work.)

I am quite happy to have parallel discussions of a number of books going on at any time. Would be have to set a date to have a discussion of any particular book?

Enid Blyton is my literary heroine. I think I read everything she had ever written by the time I was 10. I then reread the lot multiple times. I so wanted to go to boarding school!

I think, that as I started life as PrincessBoo, that I am in fact ESH royalty.

Let's start off our Topp Ackademick Discussion by wondering what Uncle Quentin was really doing in that study. Sleeping or masturbating?

Making homebrew?

Devouring The Constant Nymph and wiping his eyes on his tweed sleeve.

Discussing 1940s gay porn with impressionable young men.

Oooo, I find myself in the presence of ESH royalty!

TWW is more expensive as the kindle version than a paperback. How is that possible? (I bought it for the kindle anyway because it is my PRECIOUSSSSSSSSSSS)

I'm enjoying the Caitlin moran book at the mo. Caspar I read the help last month and enjoyed it.

Top 3 books is a tricky one and probably changes from day to day. I loved P&P and The Lovely Bones. A Suitable Boy is pretty amazing too. Love in the time of cholera also good. See, it's tricky. I was a huge Enid Blyton fan back in the day. The main reason I want to conceive is so I can read them to my kids. Judy Blume was awsum when I grew out of Blyton. I think I learned everything i know about sechs from her books.

Northey, you cannot corrupt my childhood reads in that way!

If anyone can remember where I left my capital letters, please drop me a line. Ta.

I think my favourite book ever is Notes From an Exhibition by Patrick Gale - fabulous book and one well worthy of a future BESH Book Club choice :)

Uncle Quention was definitely smoking weed in his study. And his bad temper was due to the accompanying paranoia.

I Capture The Castle, Northey!!!!!!!!!!!! I had never read that before last spring when my dear friend Headbanger sent me a copy and now I have read it twice. It makes me feel seventeen and in hopeless love with the boy who was going out with my best friend.

I read it late (hmm) in life as well, rierie! It made me remember what it was like to read books as a child - that total absorption which I've rarely recaptured as an adult reader.

I think she wrote it when she was in America during the war, hence the weird sense of intense nostalgia that pervades it.

Dot I love that book. I thought about it for a long time after I finished it.

I read Story of My Life by Jay Mcinnery & Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis when I was about 18. I still re read them a lot. other favourites are Tess of the D'ubervilles & Great Expectations. Oh and the entire Mallory Towers series!

Oooh, luvvverly books. I Capture the Castle is amaze, and has one of the best opening lines in the history of literature. And I really liked Notes etc etc.

And the best closing lines, drom!

I was addicted to The Saddle Club books as a teen - dear old Bonnie Bryant must be a machine to have turned out so many, there were 40 or so when I was reading, so goodness only knows how many there are now.

Book 2 made me sob like a baby. Poor Cobalt [sniff]

OMG, I've just Googled and discovered that there ended up being 101 Saddle Club books

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Am I right Drom? Am I? Am I?

Yes, aries. Did you do that from memory?

I have never heard of the Saddle Club books.

Yes

Random writers I like are Kate Atkinson and Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Shadow of the wind etc).

I have not read the Notes etc. book but it is now on my to do list.

I luff Kate Atkinson books too boo

Am only one chapter in to the tigers wife but really enjoying so far

Ps its me, bitey have name changed in honour of festive cocktail wot I invented.

I was going to say "Who the fuck is this interloper?"

I need to name change.