Avainsana: EBC

Julkaistu

English Book Club: Spring 2014

It’s official now: English Book Club will keep on going in the spring season 2014. The programme is completed, we are proud to present:

22.1. Margaret Atwood: Handmaid’s Tale
26.2. Sarah Winman: When god was a rabbit
26.3. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
23.4. Junot Diaz: This is how you lose her
21.5. Ian McEwan: Sweet tooth

Time and place will stay the same – Wednesdays once a month at 2 pm on the 2nd floor in Sello library.
The book of the month will be available from the 2nd floor information desk a month before each meeting.

Hope to see you there!
Päivi & Tatu.

Julkaistu

Last meetings of EBC in Fall 2013

The fall season of English Book Club has been pleasant. We have waded through three novels: The Road (Cormac McCarthy), The Catcher in the Rye (J. D. Salinger) and Started early, took my dog (Kate Atkinson). None of them has been a total winner. Opinions have varied.

Atkinson was praised for beautiful language, Salinger for his vivid portrayal of youth and McCarthy for the athmosphere he had created.

We still have two books to go this year and the programme for the spring season 2014 is in the making! 2014 is the celebration year for Tove Jansson’s 100th birthday so in honor of that we are reading True Deciever from her for our next meeting on November the 27th. Last book of this year will be Haruki Murakami’s After Dark which we will be discussing in our meeting on December the 18th. It’s a shame that Murakami didn’t win the Nobel prize for literature this year.

Welcome to Sello library and we hope to see you there! Book Club Meetings take place on the 2nd floor at 2pm.

Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sellonkirjasto

 

Julkaistu

English Book Club: Fall 2013

It’s this time of the year again: program for the English Book Club’s fall season has been published.

The recipe includes classics as well as contemporary fiction, male and female authors, one from Finland and others from around the globe:

28.8. Cormac McCarthy: The Road
25.9. J. D. Salinger: Catcher in the Rye
23.10. Kate Atkinson: Started Early, Took My Dog
27.11. Tove Janson: The True Deceiver
18.12. Haruki Murakami: After Dark

At 2pm on the second floor as usual. See you there!

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in February, Sello library

For English Book Club’s meeting in February we are reading Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. We chose the book because we wanted to read something relatively new, contemporary fiction (it was published in 2010), it has received very good reviews and it also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011. Quite a lof of buzz about it! Wikipedia also just told us, that Goon Squad is being adapted into a television series by HBO.

We are meeting to discuss the book on Wednesday, the 20th of February at 2 PM in the Cultural Space on the 2nd floor. We warmly welcome all regular visitors as well as new faces!

Last time we went through the most scientific discussion we have ever had. The book we read was Solar by Ian McEwan. The protagonist in the book is a theoretical physicist Michael Beard, and it happened that one of our regular book club members is one as well. The book raised lot of discussion and it was great having a book club member with us who gave us a lot of insight on the topic.

Jennifer Egan’s homepage
Review of the Goon Squad in the Guardian
Review in the Telegraph

 

 

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in January, Sello library

We are glad to announce that English Book Club continues with a new season from January to May!

We kick off the season with an interesting novel, Solar by Ian McEwan. The book consist of themes ranging from climate change to marital problems.

Just this week we met one of the regular EBC members who is currently reading the book and he mentioned that the book is full of science terms. His guess was that not everybody will understand nor like the fact. We will find out on the 23rd of January at 2 pm in the Cultural space (2nd floor) when we meet and discuss the book. There may be some coffee and cake, too… We’ll see. Hope to see you there!

Ian McEwan is a British novelist who has been publishing books since 1975. Solar was published in 2010 and was awarded the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. So even though the themes and subjects in the story may be serious and big, it has comical sides to it, too.

For more information on Ian McEwan and his literary work and reviews, visit http://www.ianmcewan.com/.

In our last meeting we discussed Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of loss. We talked a lot about India, the cast system and the society there, human rights issues and bar crawling. Yes, our conversation flows to all sorts of directions, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

 

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in December, Sello library

The December meeting of English Book Club consists of coffee, tea, something sweet and of course good conversation. We are going to discuss Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. We will be meeting at 2pm on Wednesday the 19th of December.

Kiran Desai was born in India (in 1971) but is nowadays living in the USA. The Inheritance of Loss is her second book, published in 2006. The book won the Man Booker Prize. It’s themes varies from globalization and multiculturalism to fundamentalism and terrorist violence. It takes place in the Himalayas and the streets of New York. Novel follows the story of two young adults. An orphan girl Sai who is living with her grandfather in a quiet mountain village and the adventures of an illegal immigrant Biju working in the kitchens of New York.

Book of November (The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes) was liked a lot by the book club members. It was entertaining, surprising and well written. We liked especially the language of the book. The ending was so quick but complex that many of us had to re-read it a couple of times to get a hold of it.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Kiran Desai’s interview on The Guardian
Review of The Inheritance Of Loss 

 

 

 

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in November, Sello library

The next meeting of English Book Club takes place on 21st of November on the 2nd floor of Sello library. The book of the month is The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

It’s a story about a middle-aged man and his past he thought he had left behind. Lately in EBC we have been reading novels by female authors so Julian Barnes and his male point of view bring a much welcomed change.

Julian Barnes (born 1946) is a graduate of modern languages and he has received many awards and nominations (The Sense of an Ending was Booker-listed) during his career, that has spun over 30 years. Barnes has written for example novels, short stories and essays and the themes have variated from history to reality, truth and love.

In our October meeting we discussed Love by Toni Morrison accompanied by tea and coffee and home-made cake. The novel raised a lot of different opinions and good conversation. Some enjoyed the flow of the language in the book and some found the plot very difficult to follow. We were happy to welcome one new member to our group of about 6 regulars, it’s always great to see new faces and hear their thoughts.

EBC takes place in Cultural Space at 2 pm, one Wednesday a month, everybody is warmly welcome!

Julian Barnes official website
Review of The Sense of an Ending

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in October, Sello library

In the October meeting of EBC, on the 24th, we will talk about Love by Toni Morrison.

Toni Morrison is an American author (born in 1931) who recieved the Nobel Prize in Literature in year 1993. Love is her eighth novel. It tells a story of several women and their relationship to a charismatic but dead hotel owner Bill Cosey.

The meeting takes place at 2pm as usual on the second floor of Sello library.

Last time we discussed Monica Ali’s Alentejo Blue. The book was controversial. We all agreed that Monica Ali is a talented and creative writer but the storyline in Alentejo Blue jumped around too much. The characters were interesting but it was almost impossible to get a good grip of any of them. It feels that Monica Ali only scratched the surface in these short stories.

You can pick up Love from the 2nd floor of Sello library, from the info desk.

New members are always welcome to join the group. We hope to see you there!
If you have any questions you can contact us at tatu.helander(at)espoo.fi

Review of Love in the Guardian
Info on Toni Morrison

Julkaistu

English Book Club (EBC) meeting in August, Sello library

Welcome to the new season of English Book Club!

The first meeting of this fall takes place on 22nd of August at 2pm in Sello library, upstairs in the Cultural space. For the first meeting we’ll be reading Purge by Sofi Oksanen. Come and join the flourishing conversation and have a cup of tea. Don’t worry if your English isn’t perfect – neither is ours! You can pick up the book of the month from the information desk on the second floor in Sello library.

Purge is a historical novel written by Sofi Oksanen, published in 2008 in Finnish. It is set in Estonia and covers years from 1930s to 1990s. The years hold many significant events in Estonia’s history, such as World War II, the collapse of Soviet Union and the re-independence of Estonia in 1991. It’s a story of two women whose paths cross. The themes of the novel are for example sexual violence and nationalism.

Sofi Oksanen is an award winning author, who received the respected Finlandia-prize for Purge in 2008. She is an active voice in Finnish literary scene, who does not fear bringing up taboo subjects, such as violence against women and the human rights violations by Soviet Union in Estonia during the occupation, which ended when Estonia gained independence.

Sofi Oksanen was born in 1977 in Finland. Her mother is Estonian.

Review of Purge in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/21/purge-sofi-oksanen

Sello library is located in Leppävaara, Espoo in Sello shopping centre.

For more details you can contact tatu.helander[at]espoo .fi .