Orange Prize for Achilles

How thrilling that this year's Orange Prize, the last under that sponsorship, has been award to Madeline Miller for her wonderful book The Song of Achilles. Bravo! In awarding the prize last night, the judges described it as: "inventive, passionate, uplifting and different". I agree.

I have previously blogged about this book (My Greek Crush) and can only offer endless thanks to Caroline for spotting, reading and recommending it in January. Classics is certainly having its day at the moment: think Antigone at the National Theatre this summer, Mary Beard and her Romans on the TV and, coincidentally as I type this, I am listening to a trailer for Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time at 9am this morning on Radio 4 which is about the Trojan wars. Maybe, in an age of conflict and tension, we feel that the classics have a particular resonance at the moment. As Madeline Miller graciously said last night: "Classics will always keep you humble".

Book group rules

I have stumbled across an amusing entry about book groups in a blog (hilarious and scary in equal measures) called The Middle Class Handbook. The entry "5 Ways To Kill Your Book Group" provides me with the opportunity to laud our gatherings, discussions and choices. Amongst things which are fatal are, apparently, over ambitious theming (e.g. food that goes with the book choice - heaven forbid); instead "crisps and olives will do" so we can confidently tick that box. We are warned against "too much Sauvignon Blanc" on the basis that the conversation nosedives and mid-week hangovers will act as a deterrent to regular attendance (a bold assumption). On balance, we can tick that box too as we usually imbibe no more than modestly.

However, I thought that we could robustly rebut the the final piece of advice, headlined "Middlemarch" which is that classics are the death knell to a book group. "Attempt anything pre-1900 and over 450 pages and your book group will shrivel up an die". Well, at least in part.......as I have an aversion to any book that long. My immediate thought was that we have on the whole, and perhaps with the exception of the impenetrable Evelina by Fanny Burney, been quite successful in our choice of classics. Think Madame Bouvary last year, The Europeans, Jane Eyre and I think some Hardy before that. On reflection, though, I discover that our preference is for classics which post-date1900: so Scoop earlier this year and previously Revolutionary Road, Wild Sargasso Sea, Brighton Rock, The Razors Edge and Dusty Answer. So perhaps the advice is worth heeding after all.

If you've two minutes to spare, listen to Martha Kearney's recent short report on book groups and booze on the World At One: Does booze ruin book groups And now, it's about time for my early evening class of Sauvignon Blanc.

The Hunger Games - what's the fuss all about?

I have been cajoled, persuaded and nagged into reading the teen sensation that is The Hunger Games by the enthusiasm and obsession of Laura who, at 13, is probably Suzanne Collins' target audience. In my defence, I know an alarming number of adults who have read it (some have devoured the trilogy) and one book group which is reading it at the moment. It is one of those books which has become a cult read and it isn't all bad. For one thing, it has a strong heroine and female role model in the delightfully named Katniss Everdene. She has the measure of the boys in most things - she might not be as physically strong but she's clever, thoughtful and wily and regularly outwits them; she keeps her emotions in check and gives little away. She is the Ray Mears of her dystopian future world since what she doesn't know about survival skills, the natural world and hunting for food isn't worth knowing. She is not worried about fashion, looks or popularity; and she has a strong sense of loyalty and morality - unusual characteristics in this reality TV world in which 24 teenagers are engaged in a fight to the death at the 74th Annual Hunger Games.

The prose is undemanding, straightforward stuff. If you can cope with "The day is glorious, with a blue sky and soft breeze. The food's wonderful, with cheese seeping through the warm bread" and so on you will find yourself engaged in this imaginary world with extremes of poverty and plenty and the domination of the masses by the elite few at its core.

My advice? See the film which is almost word for word from the book. And the sequel is being released on 22 November 2013 (yes, that's 2013) which date is already marked in red in Laura's diary.

You Deserve Nothing

Despite being set in an international high school full of Americans, our lively discussion at Catherine's last night of Alexander Maksik's first novel You Deserve Nothing was profoundly French. We spoke of philosophy and literature, Sartre and Camus, cafes and Paris, teenagers and sex (quite a lot of the latter as it turns out).

It was a good book group read which provoked some interesting and animated views. Were we being especially conscientious in our debate in order to impress Lucy who attended for the first time I wonder? There was general agreement that it was well written and that Paris provides a dazzlingly seductive and atmospheric backdrop to the novel. There was some disagreement about the credibility and depth of some of the characters although we all thought that Will was perfectly portrayed and totally believable as a teacher who inspired, albeit one who ultimately disappointed his pupils with his moral ambiguity and failure to live up to the ideas he taught. We thought that the the storyline's weakness is its inevitability and so the ending is predictable. There were comparisons with Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and with Julian Barnes' A Sense of an Ending (which I suppose if you are a first time author might be rather thrilling if they hadn't come from a book group in Kew) in terms of the tone, pace and some of the characterisations.

So an enjoyable read and a lively evening.......all the more so once we started discussing Fifty Shades of Grey. In the interests of research and in order to demystify this, here is a link to BBC Newsnight's solidly respectable Paul Mason's "business" interview with the author which includes some extracts from the book and a warning not to google S&M: Newsnight. Apparently, it sold 2 million copies in 4 weeks in the US and the popularity of erotic "literature" seems to have grown exponentially with the growth of the Kindle (you don't have to buy it in a shop and no one knows what you're reading on the tube). Alarmingly, the BBC piece also refers to the growth in paranormal erotic literature: "that's bonking vampires and bonking trolls" according to Mason. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to listen to his views on quantitive easing in quite the same way again.

We meet again at Alison's on 18th June when we will discuss Anne Sebba's biography of Wallace Simpson, That Woman. By then some of us will, no doubt, also have views to share on frisky vampires and trolls.