overcaffeinated

Thanks Sue! Bit closer to me, too :)

I'm getting fed up with my dentist always running about half an hour late! Any recommendations for an NHS dentist in ED or Peckham Rye? Thanks!

I can't be there in August (we're away) so I won't vote but I'm hoping to be back in Sept!

Not sure I'm going to make it either. Am sad to have missed a few months now, really hope I can make next month. I vote (also sorry for public announcement) for lady chatterly and satanic verses.

I'll try; I'm already out the Mon and Wed but will make it if I can!

Me neither, sorry!

Am late but coming!

I plan to be there! Especially as v keen to talk about the book...

Ooh this throws anonymous voting out of the window! Controversial :) Good list, I like the sound of all three. I vote for House of Usher and Jekyll and Hyde.

Hi all - sadly I'm going to miss this month too; my mum is visiting (I was due on Friday... nothing yet!). Nov seems unlikely but hopefully I'll see you all again in Dec or Jan!

Hi all - I won't make it as it's my pre-mat leave work drinks. Sorry! Hopefully see you next month... We'll see :)

Neither Holly nor I can make it - sorry! She's stuck at work and I'm knackered :( I vote for P45 and diary of a nobody; Holly votes for P45 and Samuel Pepys. See you next month.

Enchanted April and 16 Aug. I can't remember who said they'd do the next list...?

I am!

Ah, I can't make 14 Aug; shame. Is there still discussion about a meet-up in July?

Hi all, I live in Peckham Rye and we're expecting our first baby in mid-Oct. All seems to be going well so far; I've been lucky and avoided most of the difficult stuff, though I get out of breath very easily and have a slightly numb left leg - lovely! I've signed up to the Adriana course starting mid-July and keen to find other ways to meet mums-to-be, too. I'd definitely be interested in any meet-ups. Are you using the fb group more than this thread now? Kim, I'm not on fb - presume I'd need to join to be able to access the private group? Tash xx

I'll be there!

Hi all - here's the list for Tuesday's meeting; the theme is Young Adult fiction, from 'best of 2015' lists (really hope no-one hates YA!). The Death House, by Sarah Pinborough Many YA books thrive on conspiracy. There?s often a mystery to be uncovered, or a shadowy authority to outwit and overturn. In some ways, Death House is no exception. The book centres on a ragtag community of teens ? mostly boys but a few girls ? who are held on an island, guarded by nurses, teachers and a forbidding Matron. All have been told that they are ?defective?: sooner or later, one by one, they will sicken, and be taken to the sanatorium, where an unspecified horrific ?change? and eventual death awaits. However, where Pinborough?s novel differs from more conventional fare, is in the fact that the book ultimately isn?t a story about defeating those in power, or overturning the status quo. Instead, as 16-year-old protagonist Toby falls for newcomer Clara, it becomes a love story (albeit a very sad one). In a world where death is everywhere, every breath, and every heartbeat becomes precious. Pinborough?s vivid writing ensures her readers feel every one. Lost on Mars, by Paul Magrs You can see that Paul Magrs, the author of several Doctor Who books, is comfortable writing about a vivid extraterrestrial setting, and this gripping sci-fi thriller is set on a futuristic Mars. The story is bold and you have to love a chapter that opens with the words: "It was late in our Martian autumn when we were allowed to hold the funeral for Grandma's leg." Lora, stubborn and complex, is at the heart of this first part of a trilogy about third-generation settlers on the desolate red planet. There's also a likeable and talkative robot called Toaster. It's also a novel about alienation. But watch out for the Martian flesh-eaters. The Big Lie, by Julie Mayhew "What choice did I have but to do along with it?" A moral question that underpins much of The Big Lie, a challenging YA book by Julie Mayhew set in a 2014 Britain that is under Nazi Rule. Teenager Jessika Keller is raised in a hard-core English Nazi family and as a dutiful daughter seems to accept the idea that she should just be a pure, potential baby-machine to populate the master race. When her friend Clementine dares to question society, Jessika also begins to doubt the truth of what her mother and father have taught her. The Big Lie is a compelling and mysterious tale of protest, obedience and identity and a novel to make you think. Railhead, by Philip Reeve Philip Reeve's fast-paced thriller is set in the Network Empire, a future human civilisation that is built around a network of railway lines that criss-crosses the galaxy, passing between worlds through hyperspace portals called K-gates. Railhead draws you in immediately. It's beautifully written ("giant gas planets tilting their rings like the brims of summer hats across a turquoise sky") and there is something wonderfully romantic about the author's use of trains instead of space ships. Railhead trains laugh softly to themselves or make "high, shuddering klaxon-shriek death cries". Into this futuristic world is thrown a young petty thief called Zen Starling, who is hired by a master criminal called to steal a mysterious black orb. His adventure is the core of the story, which will appeal to readers of different ages as well as young adult fiction fans. Although the technology is inventive and dazzling, the emotions of the characters (even the robot who wants freckles) draws you in wholeheartedly. Railhead is superb. The Accident Season, by Mo?ra Fowley-Doyle Cara is the daughter of a family afflicted every October by the ?accident season,? when they?re dogged by disasters ranging from scrapes to death. In the waning days of this year?s accident season, she starts noticing dark omens: a mysteriously missing classmate who shows up in the background of all her photos, a malevolent man who looks like her long-gone stepfather following her through town. The brewing weirdness?and her need for a distraction from her feelings for her stepbrother?inspire Cara to take a risk, spending the last day of the accident season throwing a wild Halloween party in an abandoned house on the edge of town, that just might hold the answers to the secrets of her past. Fowley-Doyle?s magical realism is both transporting and purposeful, weaving a narrative web that will haunt you. The Game of Love and Death, by Martha Brockenbrough In this shape-shifting, gorgeous novel, Love and Death?in the forms of a dapper man with a fever-inducing touch, and an uncanny woman who hungers for souls?run a high-stakes game, in which Death has always won. Each chooses a human player, creating a couple that will either choose love, and therefore life, or separation, and death. Previous players have included Cleopatra and Mark Antony, Romeo and Juliet?and now Flora, an African American pilot and jazz singer, and Henry, a white musician and errant foster son to a rich newspaperman. Love and Death take on human shapes and insinuate themselves into the story, as Flora and Henry must decide, in the face of terrible obstacles, whether to choose each other. The book gets better with every page. The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge Set in a mildly alternative Victorian England, it sees Faith, the daughter of a disgraced natural scientist moving to a fictional Channel Island, where she discovers the existence of a tree that, fed by lies, has the ability to alter reality. Hardinge injects evolution, feminism and a Hamlet-esque revenge plot into the mix ? and controls it with acuity, bringing everything together into a vivid, beautifully powerful whole, playing with genre, language and expectation along the way. Hardinge won the overall 2016 Costa Award for this superb novel.

We're planning to convert our loft and after doing some research (on here and elsewhere) we got quotes from four: Benchmark Lofts, Taylored Lofts, Absolute Lofts and Prestige Build and Management (the legit one - Jay Gentle). We were most impressed with Benchmark and Prestige and think we're edging towards Benchmark based on price. Before we take the plunge, has anyone used any of these companies recently, especially Benchmark? Good/bad experiences?

Sorry it's a bit late - list for this month!: Love in Small Letters - Francesc Miralles When Samuel wakes up on 1st January, he is convinced that the year ahead will bring nothing exciting or unusual ? until a strange visitor bursts into his flat, determined not to leave. The appearance of Mishima, a stray cat, leads Samuel to a strange encounter with the enigmatic Valdemar and his neighbour Titus, with whom he had previously never exchanged a word, and is the catalyst for the incredible transformation that is about to occur in the secluded world he has built around himself. Cathedral of the Sea - Ildefonso Falcones A spell-binding drama of love, war, greed and revenge in medieval Barcelona... A young serf in fourteenth century Spain, Arnau is on the run from his feudal lord. Through famine, plague and thwarted love he struggles to earn his freedom in the shadow of the mighty Cathedral of the Sea: a magnificent church being built by the humblest citizens of the city. Arnau's fortunes begin to turn when King Pedro makes him a baron in reward for his courage in battle. But his new-found wealth excites the jealousy of his friends, who begin to plot against him, with devastating consequences. Monsignor Quixote - Graham Greene When Father Quixote, a local priest of the Spanish village of El Toboso who claims ancestry to Cervantes? fictional Don Quixote, is elevated to the rank of monsignor through a clerical error, he sets out on a journey to Madrid to purchase purple socks appropriate to his new station. Accompanying him on his mission is his best friend, Sancho, the Communist ex-mayor of the village who argues politics and religion with Quixote and rescues him from the various troubles his innocence lands him in along the way. Published in 1932, Monsignor Quixote is Graham Greene?s last religious novel, a fond homage to Cervantes, and a sincere exploration into the meaning of faith in the modern world. A Heart So White - Javier Maria Javier Mar?as's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy?its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility?hovers throughout the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Mar?as elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows and on to the costs of ambivalence. Winter in Madrid - C J Sansom The playing fields of Rookwood did little to prepare reluctant spy Harry Brett for the moral no man's land of post?Civil War Spain that awaits him in this cinematic historical thriller from British author Sansom. But those halcyon days have made him one of the few people likely to win the confidence of fellow old boy Sandy Forsyth, now a shady Madrid businessman, Franco associate and object of intense curiosity to British intelligence. Despite his reservations, Brett?whose best friend from Rookwood, Bernie Piper, disappeared in Spain a few years earlier while battling Franco with the International Brigade?accepts the assignment as his duty, and almost as swiftly regrets it. For the Madrid he finds has become a mockery of the vibrant, hopeful place he and Bernie visited during the dawn of the Republic. As in his Matthew Shardlake mystery series set in Tudor London, Sansom deftly plots his politically charged tale for maximal suspense, all the way up to its stunning conclusion. A bestseller in the U.K., this moving opus leaves the reader mourning for the Spain that might have been?and the England that maybe never was. The Yellow Rain - Julio Llamazares In this somber and elegiac novel, Llamazares's first to be translated into English, the last, dying resident of a deserted village in the Spanish Pyrenees, "forgotten by everyone, condemned to gnaw away at my memory and my bones like an old dog," summons the ghosts of his past. The closing of the local mill sent Ainielle's population to other towns, until only the elderly narrator and his wife, Sabine, remained. Lonely and grieving, Sabine killed herself, and the old man is left with only his loyal, sorrowful dog. Now, on what seems to be his final night on earth, he recalls the tragedies that have befallen him: his daughter, Sara, died when she was only four; the Spanish Civil War claimed his son Camilo; and his other beloved son, Andres (the narrator's namesake), "abandoned" his family to seek his fortune. The old man has never forgiven Andres, nor anyone else who left the village to rot, its houses collapsing "like an animal felled by a bullet." Llamazares's gorgeous prose evokes the empty streets and desolate landscape as effectively as it suggests ambiguities in the narrative's truth: is Andres the elder a crazy, potentially dangerous man who sees visions of the dead? Or is he himself a ghost? A gorgeous, heartbreaking meditation on memory and solitude, and a poetic accounting of physical and spiritual decay, Llamazares's slender novel transports readers to a grim and unforgettable world.

Hi Pam - sorry, have just emailed you the details! Look forward to meeting you tomorrow

Thanks all for coming tonight - another evening of good company, wine and bakes! Have attached pics of our creations from this and last month... See you all in Oct!

Hi all - if you've PM'd me with your email address you should have received an email from 'Make A Bake' (just sent 5 mins ago) with my address. If not, PM me again and I'll send it to you individually! Looking forward to seeing everyone on Monday and tasting more yummy things...