Our final book clubs for 2021

#LBCHorsforth – 10/11/21 – A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes – 7:30pm

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them.

In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash..

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all. . .

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

Waterstones

#LBCWSwan – 14/11/21 – 21st Century Yokel – Tom Cox – 6pm

Longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 21st-Century Yokel is not quite nature writing, not quite a family memoir, not quite a book about walking, not quite a collection of humorous essays, but a bit of all five.

Thick with owls and badgers, oak trees and wood piles, scarecrows and ghosts, and Tom Cox’s loud and excitable dad, this book is full of the folklore of several counties the ancient kind and the everyday variety as well as wild places, mystical spots and curious objects.

Emerging from this focus on the detail are themes that are broader and bigger and more important than ever. Tom’s writing treads a new path, one that has a lot in common with a rambling country walk; it’s bewitched by fresh air and big skies, intrepid in minor ways, haunted by weather and old stories and the spooky edges of the outdoors, restless and prone to a few detours, but it always reaches its destination in the end.

Waterstones

#LBC3Reads – 20/11/21 – My Family and Other Animals – Gerard Durrell – 12:30pm

Durrell has an uncanny knack of discovering human as well as animal eccentricities’ Sunday Telegraph

Ten-year-old Gerald doesn’t know why his older brothers and sisters complain so much. 

With snakes in the bath and scorpions on the lunch table, the family home on the Greek island of Corfu is a bit like a zoo so they should feel right at home… 

Gerald joyfully pursues his interest in natural history in the midst of an unconventional and chaotic family life – all brilliantly retold in this very funny book.

Waterstones

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