The Trial — Franz Kafka

XXX title="South Manchester, Chorlton, Cheadle, Fallowfield, Burnage, Levenshulme, Heaton Moor, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Northenden, and Didsbury book group: The Trial by Franz Kafka" alt="Book cover for The Trial by Franz Kafka in the South Manchester, Chorlton, Cheadle, Fallowfield, Burnage, Levenshulme, Heaton Moor, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Northenden, and Didsbury book group" width="20%" /> “It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Joseph K wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him.

We'll be reading The Trial by Franz Kafka at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury on 03 September 2026.

The Trial — Franz Kafka

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

Joseph K wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him.

This week's book is The Trial by Franz Kafka and we'll be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Enduring Love — Ian McEwan

“Who you get, and how it works out — there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily.”

This week's book is Enduring Love by Ian McEwan and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Collector — John Fowles

“I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.”

This week's book is The Collector by John Fowles and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”

This week's book is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

For continuity purposes we'll also be discussing Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit, the utility of time travel in addressing the problems of inchoate totalitarianism, and the wisdom of superimbibation. 

Heart of Darkness & The Man Who Would be King — Joseph Conrad & Rudyard Kipling

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone.”

“The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again.”

This week's books are Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir

“Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.”

This week's book is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note change of book caused by the Great Diary Shortage.  Wuthering Heights can be read in April, if you're quick.

 

The God of Small Things — Arundhati Roy

“... the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”

This week's book is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

It Can't Happen Here — Sinclair Lewis

“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”

This week's book is It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

“How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.”

This week's book is As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

North and South — Elizabeth Gaskell

“I take it that ‘gentleman’ is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as ‘a man’ , we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow men, but in relation to himself, — to life — to time — to eternity. A cast-away lonely as Robinson Crusoe — a prisoner immured in a dungeon for life — nay, even a saint in Patmos, has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as ‘a man’. I am rather weary of this word ‘gentlemanly’ which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often too with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun ‘man’, and the adjective ‘manly’ are unacknowledged.”

This week's book is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell

“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it” wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, and chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion, and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode: the revolutionary euphoria of Barcelona, the courage of ordinary Spanish men and women he fought alongside, the terror and confusion of the front, his near-fatal bullet wound and the vicious treachery of his supposed allies.

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

This week's book is Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë

“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it — but take care not to smile at any part of it.”

This week's book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details. 

Please note change of book caused by the Great Diary Shortage.  Project Hail Mary can be read in June.

 

Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.

It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.

Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.”

This week's book is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and we'll not be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Cement Garden — Ian McEwan

“At the back of my mind I had a sense of us sitting about waiting for some terrible event, and then I would remember that it had already happened.”

This week's book is The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan and we'll be not meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Riders — Jilly Cooper

“‘Hunting’s like adultery,’ he said. ‘Endless hanging about, interspersed with frenzied moments of excitement, very expensive and morally indefensible.’”

To celebrate St Valentine's day, we'll be reading the first in Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronices.

This week's book is Riders by Jilly Cooper and we'll be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Train Dreams — Dennis Johnson

“The world needs a hermit in the woods as much as a preacher in the pulpit.”

This week's book is Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson and we'll be meeting at The Didsbury on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.