Bookclub meeting on March 20th with The 100-year-old who climbed out of the window and disappeared

Bookclub meeting stay interesting and entertaining with our marvelous group and now 2 new members, Sue & Viviane. 

March bookclub meeting is on Thursday, 20th, 2014 and the book chosen is

The 100-year-old who climbed out of the window and disappeared
by Jonas Jonasson

On his hundredth birthday, just as the celebrations are about to begin out in the lounge in the old people’s home, Allan Karlsson hastily decides that he wants nothing to do with the party. He climbs through his window and disappears – and soon he has turned the whole nation on its head. He does have some experience in these matters. He has previously done the same thing with the world.
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Momento Mori by Muriel Spark on our February bookclub meeting was enjoyed by most people apart from its rather morbid subject. Written with humour, sometimes black, the perfectly structured novel manages to lighten the subject. Muriel Spark became well known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but Momento Mori was thought to be her finest book. This was also made into a film in 1992, directed by Jack Clayton and the cast included Michael Hordern as Godfrey Colston, Maggie Smith as Mabel Pettigrew and Thora Hird as Jean Taylor. Each ‘old’ character in the book exerted influences on those around them and showed the remarkable power of the human spirit.

outlook:

From Cathie's suggestions for April, 17th 2014 was chosen (hot + buns please!)

Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things




'This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose. Its opening, an invocation of the life of the city, is strongly reminiscent of Auden's Night Mail in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society...An assured debut' Erica Wagner, The Times. On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence - street cricket, barbecues, painting windows...A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. Jon McGregor's first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. Breathtakingly original, humane and moving, IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS is an astonishing debut. 'The work of a burning new talent ...Jon MacGregor writes like a lyrical angel' Daily Mail



For May 15th we have voted for a book by an English author who is living near Auch in the Gers.
Her name is Amanda Hodgkinson and she would like to come and meet us and talk to us about her writing etc. 

She does write in La Depeche every Sunday; short, sometimes amusing observations of life of an ex pat in France.

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson




In her powerful debut, Hodgkinson takes on the tale of a family desperately trying to put itself back together after WWII. Silvana and Janusz have only been married a few months when the war forces them apart. Silvana and their infant son, Aurek, leave Poland and disappear into the forests of Eastern Europe, where they bear witness to German atrocities. Meanwhile Janusz, the sole survivor of his slaughtered military unit, flees to France. There, he takes up with a local girl and, though he loves her, awaits the war's end so that he can go in search of his wife and son. He eventually finds them in a refugee camp and they travel to England together, where they attempt to put the past behind them. But the secrets they carry pull at the threads of their fragile peace. 
Hodgkinson alternates viewpoints to relay the story of three desperate characters, skillfully toggling between the war and its aftermath with wonderfully descriptive prose that pulls the reader into a sweeping tale of survival and redemption.

Amanda Hodgkinson has just released Spilt Milk:

1913. Unmarried sisters Nellie and Vivian Marsh live an impoverished existence in a tiny cottage on the banks of the Little River in Suffolk. Their life is quiet and predictable, until a sudden flood throws up a strange fish on their doorstep and a travelling man who will change them forever.

1939. Eighteen year old Birdie Farr is working as a barmaid in the family pub in London. When she realises she is pregnant she turns to her mother Nellie, who asks her sister to arrange an adoption for Birdie's new born daughter. But as the years pass Birdie discovers she cannot escape the Marsh sisters' shadowy past - and her own troubling obsession with finding her lost daughter will have deep consequences for all of them...

Bookclub members of course are welcome to read the 2d novel of Amanda. 

We are looking forward to have a lively discussion with the author. 

Reviews on bookclub meetings in the past please see our LLC bookclub blogpage with more information. 

Movies VO in the Gers for February 2014

You might like to know about a couple of films showing this month in VO:


VO performance of "Philomena"  with Judi Dench & Steve Coogan

Nogaro 4 February, 21h

Marciac 5 Feb 20.30h, 
Plaisance 5 Feb, 20.30h,
Mirande 9 Feb. 15.30h
BARBOTAN 18 Feb. 21h, 

VO performance 12 Years a Slave - (director) Steve McQueen (II) Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch

Marciac 12 February  - 18h
Nogaro  14 February - 21h  
Mirande 1 March - 20.30h




VO Performance of "Dallas Buyers Club" by Jean-Marc Vallée - Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto 

Nogaro Friday 28th February - 21h 
Mirande 4th March 20.30h

For further information on films shown in the Gers check the allocine website: 

Sorry short notice, but cannot find film programme in advance other than on allocine and thats just for 2 weeks ahead. :(

Bloops is back - collection at LLC Luncheon February 2014

Bloops is  back

 

collecting quality new and as new clothes and accessories for the next Bloops sale.

Saturday 12 April 

Salle des Fetes

Marciac

If you are sorting out your wardrobe and have any items you wish to donate please contact

bloops@live.fr

or

Gaye Piper 05 62 70 81 38

All proceeds to Medecins sans Frontieres

Men’s clothes as well

Also shoes – fairly unworn – handbags, hats, belts and scarves.



Gaye will be at the 

LLC lunch on Tuesday 11th February

and will be happy to take any donations of clothing if you wish to bring them along.

Annual General Meeting and Lunch of Ladies Lunch Club February 2014

The Ladies Lunch Club AGM (Annual General Meeting) is being held on 

 on Tuesday 11th FEBRUARY 2014

at the  Solenca/Nogaro 

We are hoping for your support and ask you to arrive by 10.45h when coffee will be available for a prompt start to the meeting at 11am.

Lunch follows the AGM and there is a subsidy of €6 per 2013 member attending both the AGM and the lunch. 
Please note the lunch cost has risen from €16 to  €17 per head due to the TVA increase.

The menu is as follows: 

Salade et ses toasts de Fourme d’Ambert aux noix et caramélisés au miel.

***

Saumon aux épinards à la crème et pommes de terre en robe des champs

***

Dacquoise au chocolat, crème légère vanille coco, glace

 

Coffee and wine included

(fotos only suggest to increase your appetite) 

Please use the booking form to indicate attendance at the AGM/lunch using the  link sent by email.
Bookings will close on Friday 7th February at noon.

If you wish to vote on the name for the club and are unable to attend the AGM you may email your preference.  
The suggestions are:

1. Ladies Lunch Club (there being no change to the name)
2. Multicultural Ladies Lunch Club
3. International Ladies Lunch Club
4. Ladies Lunch Club and Women's Group
5. International Ladies Club

We look forward to seeing you all on the 11th
Best regards

Jane, Pippa, Sue S and Sue T

For more information about the Ladies Lunch Club or any of the above or our next meeting and venue, please contact: Ladieslunchclub secretary:  lunchclubgascogne(at)gmail.com
or you join the blog here: follow by email
(click on this link if you want regular info)
or our facebook page (see widget on the blog)
Gers Ladies Lunch Club

Bookclub review and outlook February till May 2014

Our numbers were a bit depleted on last meetin but we had lively discussion about the Alice Munro short stories we had read. 

Alice Munro with Margret Atwood

 They were all quite diverse stories but the common denominator running through all, was how gifted and perceptive she was as a writer.  

Most are beautifully written, cleverly crafted short stories with characters, not always likeable, and sometimes rather uncomfortably realistic.  Whether one likes or dislikes that genre and her particular style, she was obviously the grande dame of short stories.

These were the books some of the members had read:  The Moon’s of Jupiter, Runaway, The View from Castle Rock, The Beggar Maid and The Progress of Love.

February bookclub meeting will be on February 20th, 2014 and the book chosen is

Momento Mori by Muriel Spark 

March bookclub meeting is on March 20th, 2014

and the book chosen is 

The 100-year-old who climbed out of the window and disappeared  by Jonas Jonasson

For April we have chosen a book by an English author who is living near Auch in the Gers.  

Her name is Amanda Hodgkinson and she would like to come and meet us and talk to us about her writing etc.  She does write in La Depeche every Sunday; short, sometimes amusing observations of life of an ex pat in France.  

It would be interesting to read her book before she visits us (date to be confirmed depending on her schedule) and her 1^st book is 22 Britannia Road. 

Amanda Hodgkinson has just released Spilt Milk which you could also read, if you fancied it.

Cathie has suggested 4 books, which would now be for the May 2014 meeting.  

These are listed below so at the February meeting we could choose the book we want to read for May.

Think we’ve had enough rain for now!

Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things 

'This novel owes as much to poetry as it does to prose. Its opening, an invocation of the life of the city, is strongly reminiscent of Auden's Night Mail in its hypnotic portrait of industrialised society...An assured debut' Erica Wagner, The Times. On a street in a town in the North of England, ordinary people are going through the motions of their everyday existence - street cricket, barbecues, painting windows...A young man is in love with a neighbour who does not even know his name. An old couple make their way up to the nearby bus stop. But then a terrible event shatters the quiet of the early summer evening. That this remarkable and horrific event is only poignant to those who saw it, not even meriting a mention on the local news, means that those who witness it will be altered for ever. Jon McGregor's first novel brilliantly evokes the histories and lives of the people in the street to build up an unforgettable human panorama. Breathtakingly original, humane and moving, IF NOBODY SPEAKS OF REMARKABLE THINGS is an astonishing debut. 'The work of a burning new talent ...Jon MacGregor writes like a lyrical angel' Daily Mail

Ingrid Hill - Ursula, Under

A dangerous rescue attempt in Michigan has captured the attention of the entire country. A two-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft. Ursula Wong is the only child of a poor family and referred to by one member of the TV audience as 'half-breed trailer trash', not worth all the expense.

But Ursula is the last of her family line and her story explodes into a gorgeous saga of culture, history and heredity. Ursula's forebears include a second-century BC Chinese alchemist; an orphaned consort to a Swedish queen; and Ursula's great-great-grandfather, Jake Maki, a miner who died in a cave-in aged twenty-nine.

Ursula's fate echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that any given individual's life comes to seem a miracle.

Adam Thorpe - Ulverton

At the heart of this novel lies the fictional village of Ulverton. It is the fixed point in a book that spans three hundred years. Different voices tell the story of Ulverton: one of Cromwell's soldiers staggers home to find his wife remarried and promptly disappears, an eighteenth century farmer carries on an affair with a maid under his wife's nose, a mother writes letters to her imprisoned son, a 1980s real estate company discover a soldier's skeleton, dated to the time of Cromell...

Told through diaries, sermons, letters, drunken pub conversations and film scripts this is a masterful novel that reconstructs the unrecorded history of England.

'Sometimes you forget that it is a novel, and believe for a moment that you are really hearing the voice of the dead' Hilary Mantel

 Jean Rhys -  Good Morning ,Midnight

An unforgettable portrait of a woman bravely confronting loneliness and despair in her quest for self-determination, Jean Rhys's Good Morning Midnight includes an introduction by A.L. Kennedy in Penguin Modern Classics.

In 1930s Paris, where one cheap hotel room is very like another, a young woman is teaching herself indifference. She has escaped personal tragedy and has come to France to find courage and seek independence. She tells herself to expect nothing, especially not kindness, least of all from men. Tomorrow, she resolves, she will dye her hair blonde. Jean Rhys was a talent before her time with an impressive ability to express the anguish of young, single women. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. One of the most honest and distinctive British novelists of the twentieth century, Jean Rhys wrote about women with perception and sensitivity in an innovative and often controversial way.

This is hopefully a good list to make a choice. We hope you enjoy the read and see you on upcoming February meeting.

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For more information about the bookclub or 

any of the above or our next meeting and venue, please contact:

Ladieslunchclub secretary: 

lunchclubgascogne(at)gmail.com

or you join the blog here:

follow by email 

(click on this link if you want regular info)

or our facebook page (see widget on the blog)

Gers Ladies Lunch Club

Things to do in February with Marloes

What we do in our spare time? 

On 8th February a figurine workshop is being offered by the artist Marloes Nolten at her 
atelier Gounesse in Panjas. 

For more information please contact: marloes.design@sfr.fr
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LLC Members are welcome to post their creative get-togethers with pictures and we are happy to post them to encourage others to get going meet up and have fun. 

LLC Luncheon January 2014 and important information about LLC AGM February 2014

Looking to next year 2014 and for the LLC it will start on 

Tuesday 14th January 2014 12.30h

for a 1pm lunch

 LUNCH ONLY at the 

Solenca in Nogaro

Just to confirm the lunch at The Solenca Hotel on Tuesday 14th January is NOT an Annual General Meeting. 
This AGM will take place in February, 11th.(see blog post below).
The menu:

Tartine forestiere au fromage Brebis

Supreme de Poulet au Olives et aux poivrons

Crumble pommes/poire, glace

Café et vins incl. 

Vegetarian option available

Please note the higher price of 17 Euro which is mainly due to the change in VAT.  

If you wish to join us on the 14th and please reply by 12.00 on Friday 10th January. (Members will please use the confirmation form sent to them by email.) 

If there are any changes you need to make after this time, please contact Sue Sullivan.
Jane will not be contactable after Friday, so please don't email or telephone her.   

Please bring the correct money in an envelope with your name on to the Luncheon.

Please do not forget a second envelope with your completed membership form, which was sent to you per email and €5 Euro subscription for 2014.
Non-members can subscribe at the Luncheon.

We look forward to seeing you

Jane, Pippa, Sue S and Sue T.

Please confirm your participation NLT January 10th and for more information about any of the above or our next meeting and venue, please contact:

Ladieslunchclub secretary: lunchclubgascogne(at)gmail.com

Due to the many  pressures of the festive season, we propose moving the AGM (Annual General Meeting) to February 2014.  

We need more time to gather our thoughts and this will hopefully lead to a more productive meeting. 

An important subject for the LLC in 2014: 

The AGM will now take place at 

11.00 am on 

Tuesday 11th FEBRUARY, 

again at the  Solenca/Nogaro, followed by lunch at 12.30h 

with the usual subsidy of €6 for those attending the meeting. 

We do ask for your understanding of this change in date, and hope it will mean that more of you will be able to attend.

We appreciate that this time of the year is very busy for everyone but ask you to give the LLC five minutes of your time so that we can prepare for the
AGM (Annual General Meeting) in February 2014.


If interested you can join our blog here:

follow by email (click on this link if you want regular info)

or our facebook page (see widget on the blog)

Gers Ladies Lunch Club

LLC Christmas Party 2013 review

We do hope you all enjoyed the LLC Christmas Party 2013 as much as we did. 

It was lots of fun and a great end to the year’s lunches. For some pictures please see our facebook page here.

Christophe and his team at Cafe Zik in Marciac were great hosts and the food was excellent. 

The Gersabelles performed for us, led of course by Sue Treeby.  
A very professional and talented choir. They sang a number of carols and it was good to hear verses in some of our club members languages.
  

They were accompanied on the piano by Rien de Witt.  

Then we all joined in and sang too, not perhaps as tuneful but with enthusiasm! Pass the parcel followed, much to the amusement of the staff at Cafe Zik and it got quite riotous with parcels flying across the tables.  All in all a good end to the year.  

We take this opportunity to wish you all a healthy and prosperous New Year. 
Jane, Pippa, Sue S and Sue T.

LLC Bookclub January 2014 - Short stories by Alice Munro

What's the next book to read for January in the LLC Bookclub?
The January book is your choice of a short story by Alice Munro which we can tell each other about. 

We have decided to have our first meeting of the year on Thursday 23rd January 2014. (1 week later than normally)
Again Pam is hosting us and we’ll meet at 2.30h  

Alice Munro is the nobel prize winner for literature 2013

No idea? Read 18 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro Free Online here
and have an overview of her books and stories and 
some suggestions 

1) The View from Castle Rock

with a review


2) Dear Life

with a review


3) Runaway

with a review.
Now it's your choice.


For your calendar please note:

February bookclub meeting will be on February 20th, 2014 and the book chosen is

Momento Mori by Muriel Spark 

March bookclub meeting is on March 20th, 2014
and the book chosen is 
The 100-year-old who climbed out of the window and disappeared 
by Jonas Jonasson



The December choice of 
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham was a suitable short read for the busy month leading up to Christmas. Most people enjoyed the book but had different opinions of the Krank family who, by booking a cruise, had tried to get away from the madness of Christmas. Of course it didn’t quite work out the way they had planned but perhaps the rather irritating, baa-humbug Mr Krank redeemed himself in the end. Not a typical John Grisham at all, but a quick light read.

A diverse lot of books we have read this last year and it’s so good to be introduced to different authors and books, some of which one wouldn’t necessarily choose oneself.

Looking forward to another stimulating year of reading and wishing you all a Happy New Year and healthy 2014.

Any further information about the bookclub reading list and meeting please look at our LLC bookclub blog page.

Christmas 2013 Schedule of Concerts for the Marche de la Vie

Dear Friends’

We would like to remind you of our forthcoming Christmas Concerts:

• FOR LA MARCHE POUR LA VIE (IN SUPPORT OF  CANCER SUFFERERS IN THE GERS)

                                   

On Friday 13^th December  at 20h30

in TASQUE Church 

On Sunday 15^th December at 15h  

in PLAISANCE Church 

• WITH THE CHOIR VIVA VOCE

            On Friday 20^th December at 20h30 

in IZOTGES Church

We look forward to greeting you at one of those Christmas concerts and thank you for advertising them widely.

Nous vous rappellons que nous chantons Noël

A L’OCCASION DES 2 CONCERTS CARITATIFS DE 

LA MARCHE POUR LA VIE (SOUTIEN AUX MALADES DU CANCER DANS LE GERS)

Le vendredi 13 Décembre à 20h30 en l’Eglise de TASQUE

Le dimanche 15 Décembre à 15h en l’Eglise de PLAISANCE

• AVEC LE CHŒUR VIVA VOCE

            Le vendredi 20   Décembre à  20h30 en l’Eglise d’IZOTGES

Dans l’’attente de  vous saluer  à l’un de ces concerts, je vous remercie de les publier auprès du plus grand nombre.