For the Broken Spines 20th Anniversary, I have curated a list of the ‘Top 10’ Book Group books. These may not be the best 10, but they are in my opinion the 10 that deserve another read. Once voting is complete, I will announce the top 3 at TABSAM and we will read them in September, October, and November!
Voting can be found on the Google Form sent to Book Group members. To help cast your vote, I have made a short summary of the Top 10 below:
Domain by James Herbert (May 2004)
The book that saved Book Group… if you don’t know the story, then I will be more than happy to tell it for about the 50th time!
What’s not to love about the 3rd novel in the Rats trilogy? Nuclear War and Giant Rats… “I’m in” I hear you cry! This book is so much fun, and a real surprise for anyone that thinks that Horror is not for them. And yes, if chosen, I will be reading all three!
From the blurb:
The long-dreaded nuclear conflict. The city torn apart, shattered, its people destroyed or mutilated beyond hope. For just a few, survival is possible only beneath the wrecked streets – if there is time to avoid the slow-descending poisonous ashes. But below, the rats, demonic offspring of their irradiated forebears, are waiting. They know that Man is weakened, become frail. Has become their prey . . .
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (April 2005)
The first book that we read that we didn’t know anything about before reading. Chosen from the Richard and Judy Book Club selection (picked out of a hat), it really surprised all readers with its storytelling. We were very lucky not to have picked Robbie Williams’s biography!
From the blurb:
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the ‘Cemetery of Lost Books’, a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Julian Carax.
But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find.
Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from the book, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax’s work in order to burn them.
What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind…
Perfume by Patrick Suskind (March 2007)
Probably the craziest book that we have read. A completely batshit tale of an 18th century serial killer. It goes off on a weird tangent about ¾ of the way through, and the final scene is mind-boggling!
From the blurb:
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent . . .
On the Beach by Nevil Shute (October 2014)
A post-apocalyptic novel like no other. Imagine that the world is going to end, but you have to wait 18 months for it to happen. This was my favourite book of 2014 and I have been holding off rereading it, in the hope that it will be picked. If it isn’t picked, I’ll be reading it anyway!
From the blurb:
After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (May 2015)
Every now and then, I still think about this book, and it has been 8 years since reading. A young boy in a post 9/11 New York embarks on a ‘quest’ to find the secret his father may have held. My favourite book of 2015, although I didn’t know it straight away, this novel is a slow burner that gently inches its way into your thoughts.
From the blurb:
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell embarks on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts of an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (November 2015)
A non-fiction book to make this list. Helen Macdonald’s autobiographical story of training her goshawk Mabel. An astonishingly heartfelt story about grief, loss, nature, and T.H. White (author of ‘The Once and Future King’), leads to a fascinating read.
From the blurb:
As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.
High-Rise by J G Ballard (April 2016)
We decided to read High-Rise because the Ben Wheatley adaptation came to UK cinemas shortly before – we read the book and then had a Book Group cinema trip to the Dukes. The novel is set in a locked down tower block, showcasing a hardly subtle allegory for the class system, and its power struggles
From the blurb:
‘Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.’
Within the walls of a high-tech forty-storey high-rise, the residents are hell-bent on an orgy of sex and destruction, answering to primal urges that their utopian surroundings can’t satisfy. The high-rise is a would-be paradise turned dystopia, ruled by intimidation and violence, and, as the residents organize themselves for war, floor against floor, no one wants it to stop…
HHhH by Laurent Binet (November 2016)
A blend of non-fiction and fictionalised history, this novel follows the authors attempt to write the book you are reading, about Operation Anthropoid. A genuinely enthralling novel about the mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, this book is thoughtful and exciting.
From the blurb:
Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich – chief of the Nazi secret services, ‘the hangman of Prague’, ‘the blond beast’, ‘the most dangerous man in the Third Reich’. His boss is Heinrich Himmler but everyone in the SS says ‘Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich’, which in German spells HHhH.
Beloved by Toni Morrison (July 2017)
Probably the best of all the books that we have read. Chosen after a discussion about the Great American Novel, Beloved is complex, beautiful, and heart-breaking. A monumental achievement from one of the finest American novelists.
From the blurb:
Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home – the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, ‘Beloved’.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (October 2020)
Joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 (along with The Testaments by Margaret Atwood), Evaristo’s novel features stories of different women, and how their lives are interlaced. Universally loved by Book Group members (from what I remember), it is powerful, and beautifully written.
From the blurb:
This is Britain as you’ve never read it.
This is Britain as it has never been told.
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They’re each looking for something – a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .
read, discuss, repeat. . . 