Bookclub December 2013 - Skipping Christmas

What's the next book to read in the LLC Bookclub?

Our December 2013 read will fall on the 19^th so perhaps we should think of a little celebratory meeting!?

The book that was chosen is:

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

Imagine a year without Christmas. 
No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether.

Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty; they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash; they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences–and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.

A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition.

Review to the November book:

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell 

is a historical novel set mostly in the middle East during the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference. It follows the fortunes of Agnes Shanklin, a spinster schoolteacher who, having led a very humdrum existance under the thumb of her dominating mother, survives the 1918 Influenza epidemic which kills her entire family & leaves her an heiress as a result. 

In the process of re-inventing herself she sets sail for Egypt where,  by a series of events that are at times perhaps a little overly contrived, she rubs shoulders with all the major players present in Cairo at the time including TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell & Winston Churchill. 
She is accompanied at all times by her faithful Dachsund who, some of us felt, was perhaps a little over present throughout the book adding a slightly incongruous touch of whimsy.

We all agreed that the characterisation was well done with an interesting depiction of a rather grumpy Churchill, and that the heroine, Agnes,  was a likeable & sympathetic character. We all enjoyed the historical aspects of the novel and I think we also all agreed that we enjoyed the writing style which was evocative & almost poetic in parts  although some of us felt that, in places, it became a little overly 'chatty'. 


The general consencus was that this is an enjoyable book & a good read.
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