Tring Book Club - The Silent Land and Charles Dickens

This was the second anniversary of Tring Book Club. Two years ago we first met at Tring School on an Adult Learning course. This only lasted a year, but we all decided to carry on meeting and chose The Bell in Aston Clinton as our venue. We now meet, very informally, once every eight weeks and discuss the two chosen books, and what else we have been reading. This week we met on Monday evening. I had already read The Silent Land (my posting of 16th December 2011) and had recommended it without thinking it might be chosen for the club to read. Everyone seemed to like the story. It has a very good sense of atmosphere and place. There are basically only two characters, and whilst we enjoyed their experiences in the deserted village, we thought that their characters were not entirely convincing or sympathetic. However, as supernatural mystery, it works really well. I just wish I could ski.

To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, we decided that we each would read our own choice of one of his books. On someones recommendation, I chose The Pickwick Papers. I have to say that Dickens is not really to my liking. Although I love anything that goes on TV or film. My choice is supposed to be a highly humorous story of the adventures of Samuel Pickwick and members of The Pickwick Club. However, I found the humour to be terribly old fashioned, based on incident rather than the witty words (I am presently reading Kate Atkinson's "Emotionally Weird", now that is a funny, laugh out loud  book). OK, it was the first novel Dickens wrote (he was only 24 when he started), and was originally published in monthly instalments which were hugely popular. The book is 743 pages of small print and I am about a third of the way through. The good thing is you can pick it up at any time as it is a series of adventures and has no ongoing plot. Each chapter's title is a little description e.g. "A short one. Showing, among other matters, how Mr Pickwick undertook to drive, and Mr Winkle to ride, and how they both did it". There are 57 chapters! Hilary chose to read A Tale of Two Cities, and I wished I had read that instead.