Kevin Tiller

As I had today off work, and was a little sore after the weekend’s Coastal Classic 29km run, it was good to have run and swim in a more casual manner ie not getting up early and rushing! and still have time to go to the monthly book club meeting.

This month was The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling who wrote the Harry Potter books, although I haven’t read them and probably won’t as I am not really a fan of sci-fi or fantasy. No real reason other than I like more realistic books, non-fiction, biographies, historical fiction etc.

Unsurprisingly the other people at the book club were not overly impressed with the book, and neither was I.

Although it was quite an easy read, it felt like the author was just spinning a yarn and padding it out with lots of characters, maybe a modern version of what she did with the Harry Potter books, and the end result was a feeling of “so what?”. The storyline wasn’t bad in itself, but with so many characters it felt that not a lot of time was spent padding them out and so they felt a bit wooden, in my opinion.

Book club meetings are quite good, I like the diversity of people and opinions. They all take books pretty seriously. We get about 10 each time which is a good number.

There is also a review from the Guardian here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/casual-vacancy-jk-rowling-review