The Men Only Book Club

Originally three members, PS, PG, CC, but from 2006 up to six, NB, SH, RM (joining in that order).

The months below are those in which we reviewed the book; we've never had a December book (but that doesn't stop us going to the pub for 'bookless book club'!).

On 19th February 2011 we got into the Review section of the Saturday Telegraph in a piece written by Viv Groskop, Forget fight club – join book club. Viv had stumbled on this site and got in touch to arrange a telephone interview. The resulting mentions were very fair.

Over the COVID-19 pandemic we were prevented from meeting but we continued to nominate a book each month; all those are ringed with a pink dotted border. When we resumed meetings, to discuss these, the 'backlog', we doubled-up; one chosen as usual the month before, one from the backlog. We ended coincidentally with The Manningtree Witches and Act of Oblivion.

2004

September: Lord Of The Flies — William Golding [CC]

October: Story of an Accusation — Terence Reese & The Great Bridge Scandal — Alan Truscott [PG]

November: Pompeii — Robert Harris [PS]

2005

January: The Rings of Saturn — WG Sebald [CC]

February: Hangover Square — Patrick Hamilton [PG]

March: The Republic — Plato [PS]

April: The Rotters' Club — Jonathan Coe [NB]

May: Moab is my Washpot — Stephen Fry [PG]

June: Journey by Moonlight — Antal Szerb [CC]

July: Kitchen Confidential — Anthony Bourdain [PS]

August: Christie Malry's Own Double-entry — BS Johnson [NB]

September: If I Told You Once — Judy Budnitz [SH]

October: The Complete Maus — Art Spiegelman [CC]

November: The Hollow Man — John Dickson Carr [PG]

2006

January: A Long Long Way — Sebastian Barry [PS]

February: Period Piece — Gwen Raverat [NB]

March: Barnaby Rudge — Charles Dickens [SH]

April: Beowulf — Seamus Heaney (translator) [CC]

May: One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez [RM]

June: The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafón [PG]

July: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories — Ernest Hemingway [PS]

August: Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov [NB]

September: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress — Robert Heinlein [SH]

October: The Unbearable Lightness of Being — Milan Kundera [RM]

November: Moby Dick — Herman Melville [CC]

2007

January: Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad [PG]

February: Vendetta — Michael Dibdin [PS]

March: A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole [NB]

April: Baumgartner's Bombay — Anita Desai [SH]

May: Surfacing — Margaret Atwood [RM]

June: Beyond a Boundary — CLR James [CC]

July: Wyrd Sisters — Terry Pratchett [PG]

August: Suite Francaise — Irène Némirovsky [PS]

September: The History of Luminous Motion — Scott Bradfield [NB]

October: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen — Paul Torday [RM]

November: The Satanic Verses — Salman Rushdie [SH]

2008

January: The Idiot — Fyodor Dostoevesky [CC]

February: The Three Imposters — Arthur Machen [PG]

March: The Eyre Affair — Jasper Fforde [PS]

April: The Fall — Albert Camus [NB]

May: The Road — Cormac McCarthy [RM]

June: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — John Le Carré [SH]

July: Murphy — Samuel Beckett [CC]

August: Candide — Voltaire [PG]

September: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush — Eric Newby [PS]

October: Catch-22 — Joseph Heller [NB]

November: Narziss and Goldmund — Hermann Hesse [SH]

2009

January: The Colony of Unrequited Dreams — Wayne Johnston [RM]

February: As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner [CC]

March: The Man Who was Thursday — GK Chesterton [PG]

April: The Riddle of the Sands — Erskine Childers [PS]

May: Millennium People — JG Ballard [NB]

June: Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel García Márquez [SH]

July: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive — Jared Diamond [RM]

August: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller — Italo Calvino [CC]

September: Brighton Rock — Graham Greene [PG]

October: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson [PS]

November: Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut [NB]

2010

January: War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy (trans. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky) [SH]

February: Stasiland — Anna Funder [RM]

March: Quiet Days in Clichy — Henry Miller [CC]

April: Apathy for the Devil — Nick Kent [PG]

May: Le Grand Meaulnes — Alain-Fournier [PS]

June: Little Big Man — Thomas Berger [NB]

July: On The Beach — Nevil Shute [SH]

August: A Canticle for Leibowitz — Walter M Miller Jr. [RM]

September: The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov [CC]

October: Skippy Dies — Paul Murray [PG]

November: The Finkler Question — Howard Jacobson [PS]

2011

January: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow — Peter Høeg [NB]

February: The Beginning and the End — Naguib Mahfouz [SH]

March: The Inheritors — William Golding [RM]

April: The Good Soldier — Ford Madox Ford [CC]

May: Riddley Walker — Russell Hoban [PG]

June: The Dressmaker — Beryl Bainbridge [PS]

July: Portnoy's Complaint — Philip Roth [NB]

August: Northanger Abbey — Jane Austen [SH]

September: Saturday — Ian McEwan [RM]

October: Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges [CC]

November: The Go-Between — LP Hartley [PG]

2012

January: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists — Robert Tressell [PS]

February: Rabbit, Run — John Updike [NB]

March: The Crow Eaters — Bapsi Sidhwa [SH]

April: Paper Promises — Philip Coggan [RM]

May: Scoop — Evelyn Waugh [CC]

June: Three Men in a Boat — Jerome K Jerome [PG]

July: The Song of Achilles — Madeline Miller [PS]

August: The Day Of The Locust — Nathanael West [NB]

September: A Time of Gifts — Patrick Leigh Fermor [SH]

October: The White Tiger — Aravind Adiga [RM]

November: The Rider — Tim Krabbé [CC]

2013

January: Post Office — Charles Bukowski [PG]

February: Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert [PS]

March: The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon [NB]

April: Down and Out in Paris and London — George Orwell [SH]

May: When Money Dies — Adam Fergusson [RM]

June: The Great Gatsby — F Scott Fitzgerald [CC]

July: Complicity — Iain Banks [PG]

August: The Call of the Wild — Jack London [PS]

100th meeting! September: The Right Stuff — Tom Wolfe [NB]

October: Untouchable — Mulk Raj Anand [SH]

November: The Testament of Mary — Colm Tóibín [RM]

2014

January: Life and Fate — Vasily Grossman [CC]

February: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared — Jonas Jonasson [PG]

March: Memoirs of Hadrian — Margarite Yourcenar [PS]

April: Forbidden Colours — Yukio Mishima [NB]

May: The Manor — Isaac Bashevis Singer [SH]

June: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry — Rachel Joyce [RM]

July: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest — Wade Davis [CC]

August: The Daughter of Time — Josephine Tey [PG]

September: The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time — Mark Haddon [PS]

October: The Moon and Sixpence — W Somerset Maugham [NB]

November: Kim — Rudyard Kipling [SH]

2015

January: The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909 — Pierre Berton [RM]

February: My Name is Red — Orhan Pamuk (trans. Erdağ Göknar) [CC]

March: The Storyteller — Mario Vargas Llosa [PG]

April: The Age of Innocence — Edith Wharton [PS]

May: Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro [NB]

June: Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse [SH]

July: Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism — Larry Siedentop [RM]

August: The Buddha Of Suburbia — Hanif Kureishi [CC]

September: The Gods Themselves — Isaac Asimov [PG]

October: Human Instinct — Robert Winston [PS]

November: Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden [NB]

2016

January: To Kill a Mockingbird & Go Set a Watchman — Harper Lee [SH]

February: The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History — Boris Johnson [RM]

March: Doctor Zhivago — Boris Pasternak [CC]

April: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning — Laurie Lee [PG]

May: Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel [PS]

June: Ender's Game — Orson Scott Card [NB]

July: Memoirs of a Georgian Rake — William Hickey (ed. Roger Hudson)
or Memoirs of William Hickey — William Hickey (ed. Peter Quennell) [SH]

August: The Snow Geese — William Fiennes [RM]

September: The Narrow Road to the Deep North — Richard Flanagan [CC]

October: Troubles — JG Farrell [PG]

November: Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin, An Anthology — Alan Bennett [PS]

2017

January: The Catcher in the Rye — JD Salinger [NB]

February: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? — Jeanette Winterson [SH]

March: Vimy — Pierre Berton [RM]

April: Death and the Penguin — Andrey Kurkov [CC]

May: Too Loud a Solitude — Bohumil Hrabal [PG]

June: The Complete Little World of Don Camillo — Giovannino Guareschi [PS]

July: The Little Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [NB]

August: Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire — Pete Brown [RM]

September: Goodbye to Berlin — Christopher Isherwood [SH]

October: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — Robert M Pirsig [CC]

November: The Ginger Man — JP Donleavy [PG]

2018

January: A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini [PS]

February: Hopscotch — Julio Cortázar [NB]

March: The American — Henry James [SH]

April: The Long Silence — Gerard O'Donovan [RM]

May: Fathers and Sons — Ivan Turgenev [CC]

June: The Old Man and the Sea — Ernest Hemingway [PG]

July: Just Kids — Patti Smith [NB]

August: Snowblind — Ragnar Jónasson [PS]

September: The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck [SH]

October: Small Island — Andrea Levy [RM]

November: The Peregrine — JA Baker [CC]

2019

January: Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell [PG]

February: My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferranti [PS]

March: The Swimming Pool Library — Alan Hollinghurst [NB]

April: The Sign of Four — Arthur Conan Doyle [SH]

May: De Profundis and Other prison Writings — Oscar Wilde [RM]

June: The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa [CC]

July: The Devil's Dice — Roz Watkins [PG]

August: Taras Bulba — Nokolai Gogol [PS]

September: The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson [NB]

October: Midnight's Children — Salman Rushdie [SH]

November: The Doorbell Rang — Rex Stout [PG]

2020

January: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman — Laurence Sterne [CC]

February: Erebus: The Story of a Ship — Michael Palin [RM]

March: Middle England — Jonathan Coe [PS]

April: Leviathan Wakes — James SA Corey [NB]

May: Under the Greenwood Tree — Hardy [SH]

June: The Machine Stops — EM Forster [RM]

July: The Encyclopedia of the Dead — Danilo Kiš [CC]

August: Night Walk — Bob Shaw [PG]

September: The Sorrows of Young Werther — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [PS]

October: Lamia — Tristan Travis [NB]

November: Buddenbrooks — Thomas Mann [SH]

2021

January: The Salt Path — Raynor Winn [RM]

February: Mrs Dalloway — Virginia Woolf [CC]

March: The Thursday Murder Club — Richard Osman [PG]

April: Lady in the Van — Alan Bennett [PS]

May: The Manningtree Witches — AK Blakemore [NB]

June: Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stewart [SH]

July: The Penguin Lessons — Tom Michell [RM]

August: The Tartar Steppe — Dino Buzzati [CC]

September: The Talented Mr Ripley — Patricia Highsmith [PG]

October: In Cold Blood — Truman Capote [PS]

November: Beloved — Toni Morrison [NB]

2022

January: The Italian Girl — Iris Murdoch [SH]

February: On Liberty — John Stuart Mill [RM]

March: Piranesi — Susanna Clarke [CC]

April: Rogue Male — Geoffrey Household [PG]

May: Atonement — Ian McEwan [PS]

June: The Ocean at the End of the Lane — Neil Gaiman [NB]

July: Herzog — Saul Bellow [SH]

August: My Childhood — Maxim Gorky [CC]

September: Act of Oblivion — Robert Harris [RM]

October: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character — Richard P. Feynman & Ralph Leighton [PG]

November: Full Tilt — Dervla Murphy [PS]

2023

January: The Trees — Percival Everett [NB]

February: Jews Don't Count — David Baddiel [SH]

March: Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics — Carlo Rovelli [RM]

April: The Overstory — Richard Powers [CC]

May: The Young Team — Graeme Armstrong [PG]

June: London Fields — Martin Amis [PS]

July: What it Feels Like for a Girl — Paris Lees [NB]

August: Gulliver's Travels — Jonathan Swift [SH]

September: Unsheltered — Barbara Kingsolver [RM]

October: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — Olga Tokarczuk [CC]

November: He Who Whispers — John Dickson Carr [PG]

2024

January: Unruly — David Mitchell [PS]

February: The House of Mirth — Edith Wharton [NB]


Last updated: 28-February-2024