Salmon fishing in the Yemen

Meeting o1/2008:
Date: 13 March, 7pm-9pm
Actions:
First book to be read and reviewed: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday, available at discounted price at Pages and Pages to members of Swimming Upstream Reading Club. Acquire and read the book
Text/e-mail host ideas for next book review
Annalie will set-up a blog and circulate

Outcomes from meeting
Membership list updated with e-mail addresses. It was agreed that e-mail adresses will only be used by members for the sake of reading group correspondence.
A blog (this one!) has been created as a record for monthly meetings.
General discussion about the author. Various interesting articles and anecdotes were shared by a number of members. For those who missed the meeting, click on his name for more about Paul Torday
Discussion format for future sessions introduced by Gerry and subsequently adopted by the group. General discussion about the book offered a range of divergent opinions around:

1. Depth and substance (consensus was light and entertaining read),
2. Characters (Some hated Fred's wimpishness, others had an empathy towards him),
3. Style of story-telling (some enjoyed the clever and voyeuristic approach of unravelling the story through interviews, e-mails, inquests...others found that tedious),
4. Themes and subjects (Faith, Hope, Love, West meets Middle-East, the joke and shallowness of public office, the greed and irreverance of mankind - both British and Yemeni)
5. Symbolism and imagery (salmon itself was a symbol of the struggle to keep faith, imagery of farmed salmon evoked a strong contrast to the natural state of things)
6. Meaning and message. (....I cant remember that we agreed on anything here guys???)

The group agreed to establish a rating baseline for this book and future book reviews. Consensus was reached at a score of 6/10 for Salmon fishing in the Yemen

Books considered for next meeting were:
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Affluenza - Oliver James
Down to this: A year living with the homeless- Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall
Afterwards-Rachel Seiffert
The Post Birthday World- Lionel Shriver
Skylight confessions- Alice Hoffman
Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama (this was a popular choice but since available in hard copy only, decided to postpone until late May when available in soft copy)

It was agreed that Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall's book "Down to this: a year living with the homeless" will be our next book. It retails for $32.95 at Pages and Pages but Leigh will call them and request that 10 copies be placed on reserve for Swimming Upstream Reading Group, so members can call and pick up a copy to qualify for 10% discount. More about the author: Click here

More about the homeless and homelessness: Click here

Next meeting: Tuesday 10 April, 7 pm

(for privacy reasons, names and addresses are not published here but details will be circulated by e-mail. Please refer to your membership list or call any member for information.)