Book club adventures (5B450)

When I was running my SubVerse Poetry Group in the early noughties, two other tempting ideas were popular which I didn't have the opportunity to explore at the time. One was reading groups and the other was blogging. I finally started blogging in 2013 and joining a book club became my fourth 5B450 goal for 2017.

My first foray into reading groups was a complete disaster. There was a breakdown in communication, there was no room in the group, I left the library dejected. I ended up in the local pub, drowning my sorrows over half a pint of Guinness.

My second attempt to join a book club was even more of a disaster. The time listed on the meeting page was in total conflict with reality. The book club was meant to meet at 7 pm, when the library was in fact closed.

For my third attempt at joining a book club I turned away from the library avenue towards the modern Meetup internet avenue. Here I found Ruislip Readers who meet monthly in an unassuming pub in Ruislip.



It was October when I joined and they were in a Halloween mood. In this month we were reviewing Stephen King's 'The Shining', a book I had already read, although had not reviewed on Good Reads.

   

The Ruislip Book-to-Film Club did not disappoint. The company, chat and accompanying craft beer were all quite wonderful. I had to rake through my memory for choice nuggets about The Shining, both the book and the film were mild obsessions of mine about twenty years ago. While the first hour was full of Stephen King chat, the second was mostly preoccupied with what we were going to read and watch next. I put in a bid for Daphne Du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rebecca'. I left satisfied with the proceedings and the upcoming prospect of reading and watching Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' ready for the next meetup in November.

The Shining - Review by LJ Finnigan (read at Christmas, 1995)

I don't read many Stephen King books as I find them so scary. This one I found to be particularly so. There is a bit of background story about the father's job situation and his son's specially sensitive nature, 'the shining', before we arrive in the main setting of the story. The Overlook Hotel is a huge, hollow place in the middle of nowhere and is a fully blown character in itself. In this desolate building, the father, Jack, his vulnerable wife, Wendy, and special little boy, Danny, arrive as guardians for the off-season. Winter deepens, the hotel gets snowed in, the family gets more isolated and the nightmares become more real, in particular the father becomes even more scary than the ghosts, that inhabit the hotel. The father was very vividly brought to life, in Stanley Kubrick's film, by Jack Nicholson, for me the most stand out performance of his career. The endings of the book and the film are quite different, I preferred the book's ending. That said, I think the book and the film are both great.