One of Ours by Willa Cather

This stirring novel about World War I won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. In the lucid, unadorned prose that were her hallmark, Cather brings to life the simple Nebraska farm folk and their tranquil rural lifestyle, showing how the Great War, seemingly so far away on the Old Continent, eventually touches them all.

Currently Reading - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, Never Let Me Go hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life. 

Have you read it yet?  Are you looking forward to reading it?  Have you seen the film?  Let us know what you think! 

Now reading - The Junior Officer's Reading Club - by Patrick Hennessey

After some very good discussions about last month's book 'Room' by Emma Donoghue, we move swiftly on to the book choice for May...


Patrick Hennessey is a graduate in his 20s. He reads Graham Greene, listens to early-90s house on his iPod and watches Vietnam movies. He has also, as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, fought in some of the most violent combat the British army has seen in a generation.

This is the story of how a modern soldier is made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the nightmare of Iraq and Afghanistan. Showing war in all its terror, boredom and exhilaration, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club is already being hailed as a modern classic.

Have you read it yet?  If so, please post a comment and let us know what you think.

Currently reading...

Room by Emma Donoghue 

ROOM is narrated by a five-year-old called Jack, who lives in a single room with his Ma and has never been outside. An international bestseller as soon as it was published in August 2010, ROOM has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (for best Canadian novel). It has also been a finalist for International Author of the Year (Galaxy National Book Awards) and the Governor General’s Award.  The American Library Association have given it an Alex Award (for an adult book with special appeal to readers 12-18). ROOM was Amazon.ca and Indigo’s Best Book of 2010, the listeners’ choice on Liveline (Ireland), and fiction winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards.
Jack and Ma live in a locked room that measures eleven foot by eleven.  When he turns five, he starts to ask questions, and his mother reveals to him that there is a world outside. Told entirely in Jack’s voice, ROOM is no horror story or tearjerker, but a celebration of resilience and the love between parent and child.


Have you read it yet?  We would love to hear what you think!