Cornflower Book Group - February & March 2014

 

    As you know, the Cornflower Book Group is reading Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce as our January book (we'll talk about it from next Saturday), but today let's look ahead to our February and March titles as a bit of advance notice is helpful. I hope you'll approve of both novels I've chosen and will be as keen to read (or re-read) them as I am.

    In February, a short, dark book for what will still be quite short, dark days (at least up here in the northern hemisphere): Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first published in 1886, a classic which really needs no introduction.

    For the lighter, brighter March days, I've taken Julie's prompt (see her comment here) and decided to offer Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855), the first of his Chronicles of Barsetshire, as a group read, and if that goes down well, we might even cover more of the series in future months.

    The chances are you'll have copies of both books already on your shelves, but if not they should be easy to come by. There are numerous paperback editions, audiobooks (for example here and here), Kindle versions are available free (and should you be so inclined you could go the whole hog and get the Complete Works of Anthony Trollope - all 47 novels, stories, notes, biographies, criticism and so on - for £1.39, and the slighter but nonetheless comprehensive Stevenson canon too), and if libraries don't have them to hand then sharp words are in order!

    Let's say we set our discussion dates as from Saturday, 22nd. February for Dr. Jekyll, and Saturday, 29th. March for The Warden.

    I'm looking forward to some good reading with these two, and I hope you'll join in and read them with me.