December book - Breath by Tim Winton

When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his partner, better than the parents, what happened and how.

Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him.

Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing.

Our last book for 2009 provided a lively discussion for our first meeting of the year. We divided into two camps over Tim Winton's Breath. We had the die-hard Winton fans who, to put it mildly, absolutely loved this book! It was brimming with Australian 'Winton' charm, superb characterisation and a wonderful sense of place ... his much loved West Australian coast.

Then we had the not so converted. This was grounded mostly in the writing style. It is true that Winton's style either works for you or not, with the latter being the case here. A few thought it just a surfing story with too much description and not enough rounding off of the main character's adult life.

His his fans strongly disagreed with these views and our discussion moved onto the other issues covered in the story; teenage recklessness and thrill-seeking, parent/child relationships, simply coming-of-age and something more sinister ... the control of young lives by dysfunctional adults. This particular issue was disturbing for some of our readers, mainly the inclusion of auto-erotic asphyxiation, but then, when has Winton ever shied away from stepping outside the boundaries?

Reagardless of its critics, Breath scored well with our group and I think it will be a contender for a 2010 favourite. All in all, a great start to a new year of reading. If you haven't taken the plunge yet, dive in and see what you come up with!

Favourte book for 2009

Well, another year of reading has come and gone and this has been one of our best for attendance yet. Every year we seem to grow stronger as book clubs become more popular and self-professed bookworms become more enthusiastic about sharing their reading experiences. If you love reading and haven't joined a book club yet, make it a New Years resolution and find a club that suits your needs. You won't regret it!

Here at Dapto we're all looking forward to 2010 and a new list of books to read ... but which was our favourite for 2009? It was a simple exercise this year, as The Book Thief by Markus Zusak won by a clear margin. We read this early in the year, so there is no review post for it, but I can tell you that it was close to unanimous that this is a fantastic read. Comments that were put forward included; wonderful characterisation, good momentum, beautiful language and original narrative. And of course the scores were high, which resulted in its first place among the year's books.

On the negative side a few of our readers thought the writing to be a little on the young level, aimed more at teenagers (although many of us disagreed with this) and it really was just another story about the holocaust, which there are too many of anyway. These few things aside, The Book Thief proved to be a popular choice and the first of its kind for more than a few of our members ... a worthwhile accomplishment for any book club.