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Book Lovers Group
Join us at the popular SBC Book Club. Enjoy lively discussions over a
drink or two. Whether you are an avid reader or would like to read more,
you'll love our relaxed friendly group.
Where and when do you meet?
Our Book Lovers Group meets at 7pm on the first Wednesday of each month
at The Traverse Theatre Bar. 10 Cambridge Street EH1 2ED
Map
How do you choose books?
Each month a member of the group will choose a book for us to read and
discuss. Read on for a list of this year's books.
Do I need to be a member of the Sunday Brunch Club?
Yes. And there is no charge to join.
Join today!
How do I book to go to a book group meeting?
Simply book online using our events calendar. Just select the
date you want, book online and turn up. We're very friendly, relaxed and
welcoming to new members.
See events calendar here
View Sunday Brunch Club book choices past and present
2012 Books
See 2010 books here
See 2011 books here
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- Wednesday 11 January 2012
The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
*****THIS MONTH WILL WE MOVE TO THE FILMHOUSE CAFE AS
THERE IS A BAND ON AT THE TRAVERSE
Filmhouse, 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh EH3 9BZ
Map
"Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a
pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and
fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life
- an emptiness once filled by love.
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century
Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life
and love, she is shocked out of herself. Turning her back on her
family she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of
this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking
Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are
heartbreakingly explored..."
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Wednesday 1 February 2012
The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric
"This
book is fabulous - funny, horrific, subversive - in short a
wholly addictive read. I don't think I have enjoyed anything as
much since Perfume" Joanne Harris
"If it doesn't scoop all the prizes, we live in an unjust world.
It's an absolute corker ... It's years since I enjoyed a novel
this much - or felt such strong envy of an author for having the
breadth and richness of imagination to create such a world" A.N.
Wilson
"This is, essentially, a love story told by a delightfully
riotous collection of characters and voices ... Fantastically
gripping" Marie Claire
"A witty, exciting, over-the-top page-turner which becomes
increasingly addictive... Quite unlike anything else around -
and all the better for that" Daily Mail
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Wednesday 7 March 2012
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
" One
of the most widely read novels from Nigeria's most famous
novelist, Things Fall
Apart is a gripping
study of the problem of European colonialism in Africa. The
story relates the cultural collision that occurs when Christian
English missionaries arrive among the Ibos of Nigeria, bringing
along their European ways of life and religion. In the novel,
the Nigerian Okonkwo recognizes the cultural imperialism of the
white men and tries to show his own people how their own society
will fall apart if they exchange their own cultural core for
that of the English."
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Wednesday 4 April 2012
Whit by Iain Banks
"A
little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. Innocent in the
ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion,
the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire
religious cult: Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her
cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian's four-
yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith,
Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the
apostate back into the fold. But the road to Babylondon (as
Sister Angela puts it) is a treacherous one, particularly when
Isis discovers that Morag appears to have embraced the ways of
the Unsaved with spectacular abandon. Truth and falsehood;
kinship and betrayal; 'herbal' cigarettes and compact discs -
Whit is an exploration of the techno-ridden barrenness of modern
Britain from a unique perspective."
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Wednesday 2 May 2012
Have the Men Had Enough? by Margaret Forster
"An
excellently funny, moving novel-a text for our times" The
Independent
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Wednesday 6 June 2012
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
"Once in a while, a stunningly
powerful novel comes along, knocks you sideways and takes your
breath away: this is it... a horrifying, original, witty, brave
and deliberately provocative investigation into all the casual
assumptions we make about family life, and motherhood in
particular" Daily Mail
"This startling shocker strips bare motherhood... the most
remarkable Orange prize victor so far" Polly Toynbee, The
Guardian
"One of the most striking works of fiction to be published this
year. It is Desperate Housewives as written by Euripides... A
powerful, gripping and original meditation on evil" New
Statesman
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- Wednesday 4 July 2012
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
"A
new edition of one of the bestselling and best-loved books of
recent years, with a new introduction by the author. The
publication of 'Wild Swans' in 1991 was a worldwide phenomenon.
Not only did it become the bestselling non-fiction book in
British publishing history, with sales of well over two million,
it was received with unanimous critical acclaim, and was named
the winner of the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book
of the Year Award. Few books have ever had such an impact on
their readers. Through the story of three generations of women
-- grandmother, mother and daughter -- 'Wild Swans' tells
nothing less than the whole tumultuous history of China's tragic
20th-century, from sword-bearing warlords to Chairman Mao, from
the Manchu Empire to the Cultural Revolution. At times
terrifying, at times astonishing, always deeply moving, 'Wild
Swans' is a book in a million, a true story with all the passion
and grandeur of a great novel. For this new edition, Jung Chang
has written a new introduction, bringing her own story up to
date, and describing the effect the success of 'Wild Swans' has
had on her life."
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- Wednesday 1 August 2012
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
"The hauntingly prophetic classic novel set in a
not-too-distant future where books are burned by a special task
force of firemen.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are
forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even
so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are
books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire
Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by
helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy
society to preserve and read books.
The classic novel of a post-literate future, ‘Fahrenheit 451’
stands alongside Orwell’s ‘1984’ and Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’
as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by
the media, drugs and conformity.
Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny
insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which
over fifty years from first publication, still has the power to
dazzle and shock."
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- Wednesday 5 September 2012
A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve
"Margaret
and Patrick, married just a few months, set off on a great
adventure - a year living in Kenya. While Patrick practices
medicine, Margaret works as a photojournalist, capturing a
dizzying and sometimes dangerous city on film. When a British
couple invites the newlyweds on a climbing expedition to the
summit of Mount Kenya, they eagerly agree. But during their
arduous ascent a horrific accident occurs. In its aftermath,
Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain
and how it has transformed her and her marriage, perhaps for
ever. With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, A
Change in Altitude illuminates the irrevocable impact of tragedy
and the elusive nature of forgiveness."
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- Wednesday 3 October 2012
Engage by Paul Kimmage
"'Engage!'
was the last word Matt Hampson heard before dislocating his neck
while in rugby training with other young England hopefuls. On a
cold, grey, overcast day in 2005, the cream of young English
rugby gathered at a Northampton training ground. Matt Hampson, 'Hambo'
to his mates, was one of them. He had dreamt of playing rugby
for England ever since he had picked up a rugby ball at school.
His skill, conviction and dedication had brought him to the cusp
of realising that dream, in an England U21 team that included
Olly Morgan, Toby Flood, Ben Foden and James Haskell. But as the
two sets of forwards engaged for a scrum on the training field,
the scrum collapsed and Matt, who played tight-head prop, took
the full force of two opposing sides. In that moment his life
changed forever. Paul Kimmage went to visit Matt as he
recuperated, and wrote a piece for the Sunday Times which won
him his third successive SJA sports interviewer of the year
award. They struck up a friendship and here, Paul tells Matt's
whole story, in all its intimate detail. From the build-up to
the dreadful day, to Matt's recuperation, to his struggle to
adjust to normal life again, to his family and friends, to other
tragic incidents on the rugby field, to the response of the RFU,
this is a story of terrible sadness yet unadorned triumph and
joy, of anger yet of reconciliation and peace ...of a boy who
became a man."
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- Wednesday 7 November 2012
Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
"Yeah, yeah, the usual. A crime. A corpse. A killer. Heard
it. Except this stiff happens to be a Ponsonby, scion of a
venerable Edinburgh medical clan, and the manner of his death
speaks of unspeakable things. Why is the body displayed like a
slice of beef? How come his hands are digitally challenged? And
if it's not the corpse, what is that awful smell?
A post-Thatcherite nightmare of frightening plausibility,
Quite Ugly One Morning is a wickedly entertaining and
vivacious thriller, full of acerbic wit, cracking dialogue and
villains both reputed and shell-suited."
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- Wednesday 5 December 2012
The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling
"When
Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the
little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford
is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square
and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is
a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents,
wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their
pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems. And
the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes
the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will
triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and
unexpected revelations?
Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The
Casual Vacancy is
J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults."
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