Bushey Bookclub
Welcome book lover!
Welcome to Bushey Bookclub, a friendly group of avid readers who meet monthly to discuss books we've chosen across a wide range of genres.
What we are currently reading
The Housemaid is watching
“You must be our new neighbors!” Mrs. Lowell gushes and waves across the picket fence. I clutch my daughter’s hand and smile back: but the second Mrs. Lowell sees my husband a strange expression crosses her face. In that moment I make a promise. We finally have a family home. My past is far, far behind us. And I’ll do anything to keep it that way…
The Lowells’ maid isn’t the only strange thing on our street. I’m sure I see a shadowy figure watching us. My husband leaves the house late at night. And when I meet a woman who lives across the way, her words chill me to the bone: Be careful of your neighbors.
- amazon
What we read last
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
We scored this 4.7/10
A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.
What we read in September
We Solve Murders
We scored this 7.6/10
Solving murders. It's a family business.
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He still does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers the pub quiz and afternoons at home with his cat Trouble. His days of adventure are over – that’s his daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul, which makes being a private security officer to billionaires the perfect job. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Then a dead body, a bag of money and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending Steve an SOS...As a breakneck race around the world begins, can they stay one step ahead of a deadly enemy?
What we read in August
Mansfield Park
Celebrating 200 years since Jane Austen's death.We scored this 4/10. Sorry Jane we are not fans!.Taken from the poverty of her parents' home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle's absence in Antigua, the Crawford's arrive in the neighbourhood bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen's first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
What we read in July
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
We scored this 6.7/10A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian," by Marina Lewycka, is a comedic novel focusing on a Ukrainian-British family in England. The story centres around two sisters, Vera and Nadezhda, who must deal with their widowed father's sudden engagement to a younger Ukrainian woman, Valentina. The novel explores themes of family, aging, cultural identity, and the clash between generations. While the novel is humorous, it also delves into darker aspects of European and Ukrainian history, touching on the pasts the characters would rather forget.
What we read in May
Dark Matter
** We scored this 7.45/10**Jason Dessen has been abducted. His life has been stolen. To get it back, he will go on a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could have possibly imagined. Dark Matter is a relentlessly surprising alternate-universe sci-fi thriller from Blake Crouch.Dark Matter is madly fast-moving, made even more so by Crouch’s not un-irritating habit of breaking his narrative up into single-line paragraphs. Like so:“We’re in a simple, finite box again.
Four walls.
A door.
A lantern.
A backpack.
And two bewildered human beings.”
- Alison Flood. The Guardian
What we read in April
Dream Count
We scored this 6/10."The author’s first novel since 2013 – a stately sisterhood saga about a group of women whose lives haven’t turned out quite as planned – continually reframes our understanding of the quartet, practically offering four books for the price of one" - The Guardian
Where we meet
The Villiers Arms
Family run Free House in the heart of Oxhey Village.
108 Villiers Road, Watford, United Kingdom WD19 4AJ
Address
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