The meeting in May was not book-based, but asked members to bring along their suggestions for readings around the theme of 'Contemplating the Future'. I suggested this not having any idea of how the evening might pan out, but as ever our ideas roamed widely.
As host I started with a future that I cannot begin to contemplate, inspired by the recent film 'The Hurt Locker', and I read 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death' by W B Yeats. How does a person face the certainty of death? Is it just adrenalin that keeps soldiers going? We did talk a lot about the contemplation of death. Donna read 'As I Walked out one Evening' by W H Auden, where lovers swear eternal faithfulness, but how hopeless it all is:
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
Marion delighted us all with a poem of her own, typically forthright, 'When the future seems bleak and you've nothing to do'. The message? Don't just sit there wondering what the future might hold, just go out there and take it into your own hands and do all the things you've dreamt about for so long.
Sheila read from one of Paul Theroux's books, where he talks about his feelings on being diagnosed with cancer. The future is not always about things ending, but also about new beginnings.
Merinda discussed David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' and the alternative universe that it presents. The chapter we looked at is about the recording and archiving of memories. It is also about dreams of other lives: 'Dreams are all I have ever truly owned'. I am not sure whether they were dreams of an afterlife, the one future we didn't speak of is the possibility of life after death.
Lynne raised the question of the future of bookclubs, and of reading in general, with the rise of new media. The consensus was that the medium didn't matter that much, a question of personal preference, but we'd still be reading!
Finally, I could not resist reading a couple of my favourite poems which take a quirky look at the future, Jenny Joseph's 'Warning' (When I am an old woman I shall wear purple) and Roger McGough's 'Let me die a youngman's death'.
This month's cake was Death by Chocolate, what a way to go!
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