Discover The Haslemere Book Shop's choices for their next book club read - they've gone for a theme this time!  Sue, Charlotte and Emily have all picked books in the Penguin Vintage Classic series  (full disclosure, they are trying to win a hamper from Penguin for promoting the series in the shop this summer - and they do love a hamper!) It's an interesting mix of books as usual, although longtime attendees will probably be able to guess who picked what without scrolling down!

Please let me know which book you'd like to vote for by Saturday. They'll announce the winning book next week and the date of the next meeting! Best wishes, The Book Club Team

The choices are:

I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman - chosen by Charlotte

Discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, these women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollections of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. But soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above.

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan - chosen by Emily

Four Chinese women, four America daughters - can they learn to understand each other? In 1949 a group of Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives  –  until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve inherited of their mothers’ pasts.

Modern Nature, Derek Jarman - chosen by Sue

Read this meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness, which is also a powerful account of his life as an HIV positive man in the 1980s. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life: his childhood, his time as a young gay man in the 1960s, his renowned career as an artist, writer and film-maker. It is at once a lament for a lost generation, an unabashed celebration of gay sexuality, and a devotion to all that is living.

Learn more about the Haslemere Book Shop's Book Club here.

Copyright © 2024 The Haslemere Bookshop, All rights reserved.

The Haslemere Bookshop, THE HASLEMERE BOOK SHOP, 2 CAUSEWAY SIDE, HIGH STREET HASLEMERE, Surrey GU27 2JZ