Links for the next meeting - The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

The Hare Psychopathy Checklist on Wikipedia

Pictures & more about book 'Being or Nothingness' that started it all off

CEO Al Dunlap

CEOs & Psychopaths in Business Insider

David Shaylor

Rachel North's blog

There's a long interview with Jon Ronson about the book in the Little Atoms podcast - download it at iTunes here

Links for the next book - Urban Grimshaw and the Shed Crew by Bernard Hare

You can see Bernie, Frank, Trudi and - yes - Urban in this video made for The Culture Show at the time of publication.  Urban is 21 at the time of filming.


Bernie Hare and The Shed Crew from andy robbins on Vimeo.

You can see what Bernard Hare is doing now on his own site here

Wikipedia on the East End Park area

A news report on the Angela Pearce murder

For a bit of contrast, here is police blogger Nightjack on 'The Evil Poor'

A discussion of the book on the East Leeds Memories site - the writers tend to be older people who don't still live in Leeds

A very good 5 star review from Amazon: "This is an extraordinarily well written book and cleverly depicts how hard it is for those on the outside to get in"

& a very dismissive 2 star review: "Let's face it, your life is pretty screwed up. But none of this is your fault, at least not according to Bernard Hare; you see this is the fault of Society, which has failed you and your whole community"

Links for the next meeting - The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Below are some reviews and some discussion questions. They're quite wordy but might be a good start.

A review on Nabou.com

A review of it (as a children's book) on The Guardian

Some study questions on Spark Notes...

... & some on LitLovers

also - The Alchemist summarised and more on Wikipedia

It's been said that The Alchemist is essentially the same story as one of the tales in The Arabian Nights - The Ruined Man Who Became Rich Again Through A Dream 

Links for the next meeting - 4 Vintage Classics

Since none of the books are particularly literary, but all have been made into films, it's probably as useful as anything to post links to the trailers!

Flowers in the Attic - Virginia Andrews



(They decided to completely remove any references to incest for the film)

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M Auel



(Daryl Hannah!)

The Day of the Jackal - Fredrick Forsyth



(& for laughs, here's the remake with Bruce Willis as The Jackal, and Richard Gere as an IRA assassin co-opted to help track him down.  I missed that bit in the book too)



The Boys From Brazil - Ira Levin



Plus - Full film here

Links for the next meeting - The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason

A five star review from Amazon -

"Highly imaginative, obsessive and truly magical novel by Daniel Mason. A combination of fiction, fantasy and travelogue, an ambitious but intriguing piece of work by Mason.
The plot seems to be travel fantasy - Edgar Drake, a piano tuner with perfection in Erards, travels in to darkest jungles of Burma and India.in 1886 to help the Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll. A sea voyage and boat journey in to the remotest possible place one would imagine to repair and tune a piano - a special piano, a peacemaker."

& a three star one - 

"This book has a lot going for it. The plotline is intriguing - an expert piano tuner, an authority on Erards, goes to darkest Burma to tune the piano of the eccentric but hugely effective Surgeon Major Carroll. The writer knows a lot about different aspects of his subject - sea travel in the late 19th. century, the topics which interest Carroll, Burmese history, the British presence in Burma, pianos and how to tune them .... all of that seems fine. It's fairly well written and moves forward in a competent way. But I seldom was really interested. Why? I think this is a book which works too hard. There is just too much validating detail, the stuff you need to make an exotic book like this come to life. It is too consciously written and it loses the naturalness and simplicity of a well-told tale. Once the tuner, Drake, got to Carroll's base I quite liked it, and I read the second half quickly, drawn on by the story, but I was never fully convinced and I did not find it compelling."

A history of the Shan State, from Wikipedia

Plus - a new documentary about Myanmar is coming out

Links for the next meeting - The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

The book has some questions for book groups at the end to guide discussion, but there are three quick links...

This is an interview with the author

And some three star reviews from Amazon, (which I thought gave some of the more balanced views on the book).

and surprise surprise, the film version is currently in production ...

Links for the next meeting - Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka

Wikipedia is useful for background on Sri Lanka, the Civil War and the National Team
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lanka_national_cricket_team

A couple of reviews:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/01/the-chinaman-shehan-karunatilaka-review
http://jaiarjun.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/absent-spinner-cricket-and-life-in.html
http://bitethebook.com/2012/04/17/shehan-karunatilakas-chinaman-the-legend-of-pradeep-matthew-2/

And following on from the above, an interview with the author:
http://bitethebook.com/2012/05/25/book-chewing-an-interview-with-shehan-karunatilaka-author-of-chinaman/

And mixing fiction and reality again:
http://pradeepmathew.com/
& also
http://thegreatpradeepmathew.com/
& finally - Articles by WG Karunasena
http://kreedasl.com/