Review of the TV Book Club

We wrote about the new TV Book Club in January when it was first announced. Now, 3 weeks in, it's finally a proper discussion of books.

The first two weeks felt pretty weak and frustrating because too much time was spent on the celebs (Chris Evans and Alan Davies) with the book under discussion squeezed into too much time at the end. Also the interaction between the panelists seemed a bit false.

The third week was a lot better, though. Either by luck or design Gok Wan wasn't there, and one fewer person in the studio made it easier for the others to really get stuck into the book. They also seemed more natural together, and acting more like passionate readers and less like celebs ticking demographic boxes. You don't need to people to be famous, just to have strong opinions, articulately expressed.

For example, I really like Newsnight Review (now re-named The Review Show) on BBC 2, and as you get used to the people on it you look forward to seeing what they're going to think of the items under discussion. The classic line up of Tom Paulin, Tony Parsons and Alison Pearson in the late 1990s was really successful despite the fact that at the time none of them were well known before being on the show. I really wanted that for the TV Book Club, and although they've gone the celeb route, I really want people like Nathaniel Parker and Laila Rouass (neither of whom are really known to me) to live up to that. Hopefully by the time they get onto Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook I'll be anticipating the stands they'll take on different aspects of the story.

Anyway, it's now starting to feel like a real book club, rather than a plugging machine, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing what they make of Juliet Naked, the only one of the books on the list that I've actually read.

For another example of the TV Book Club, have a look at what they do in Australia. They really get stuck in!

Links for the next meeting - Alice, Grimm, and Treasure Island

A few notes on the books for the next meeting:

A few notes for the books:

Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wikipedia

Alice - from a scientific point of view - article in The New Scientist

Grimm's Fairy Tales
Wikipedia on the context & history

Click on individual stories for development over time and analysis, e.g. this on Hansel & Gretel

Little Red Riding Hood re-imagined (video - warning, music quite loud)

Treasure Island
Again Wikipedia

& a study guide

See you on Wednesday!

Channel 4's TV Book Club

Starting next week on Channel 4 and More4 is the newest version of a TV book show.

Coming out of the ashes of Richard and Judy's Book Club (it's got the same producer, Amanda Ross), the TV Book Club will use 5 different presenters to introduce readers to ten new paperbacks.

The presenters are:

Dave Spikey
Jo Brand
Gok Wan
Laila Rouass, &
Nathaniel Parker

The books are:

Sarah Waters - The Little Stranger
Belinda Bauer - Black Lands
Sarah Dunant - Sacred Hearts
Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked
Abraham Verghese - Cutting For Stone
Liz Jensen - The Rapture
Roma Tearne - Brixton Beach
George Pelecanos - The Way Home
Wendy Moore - Wedlock, &
Matthew Quick - The Silver Linings Playbook

(This site is selling all of the books for £3.99 each)

It's on More4 on Sunday nights at 7.30, and Channel 4 on Monday lunchtimes (rather bafflingly - why not put it on on Sunday teatime? Or after T4?), and since it's on Channel 4 I'm hoping it'll be on YouTube too.

It's sponsored by SpecSavers - 'Enjoy a Good Read with SpecSavers' - which is quite clever.

Update - There's a feature on the show in the Guardian.

Book of the Day Quote - Penguin Classics

Little Red Riding Hood re-imagined

Brilliant, surreal video.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Alice's adventures in Algebra

This is an interesting article from the New Scientist on the importance of maths, and partucular algebra, in Alice in Wonderland:

"The madness of Wonderland, I believe, reflects Dodgson's views on the dangers of this new symbolic algebra. Alice has moved from a rational world to a land where even numbers behave erratically. In the hallway, she tried to remember her multiplication tables, but they had slipped out of the base-10 number system we are used to. In the caterpillar scene, Dodgson's qualms are reflected in the way Alice's height fluctuates between 9 feet and 3 inches. Alice, bound by conventional arithmetic where a quantity such as size should be constant, finds this troubling: "Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing," she complains. "It isn't," replies the Caterpillar, who lives in this absurd world."

For more of this sort of stuff read on here.

Noughty Books

Here's a relatively random set of books of the noughties from the Telegraph.

It's based on books that 'defined the noughties', rather than ones that were best selling, or any good, but there are some interesting ones on the list, including (by my reckoning) ten that we've read, and a few others (inc The Line of Beauty) that we considered.

Plus - The Onion AV Club has a shorter list, but much more in tune with our tastes.