The Club: A Reese's Book Club Pick

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In 1758 Burke married Mary Nugent, daughter of Charles Nugent, a physician who had successfully treated Burke. When The Club was formed, Charles Nugent would be a charter member, one of the "men about town." Burke's entry into politics followed a brief time at the Board of Trade under Lord Halifax. In 1765 he successfully ran for the MP of the small town of Wendover, near London. In 1774 he would become a member for the larger city of Bristol. This means that Damrosch has to give analyses of Burke, Adam Smith, and Edward Gibbon, and he is mostly successful at that. Damrosch’s assessment of Johnson as a chronic depressive does genuinely help to illuminate the doctor’s personality; shading it in with his most profound and persistent psychological struggle—and thereby also giving insight into some of his principal motivations and crucial decisions as well; like his moving in with Hester Thrale and her husband at Streatham Place, their sprawling and idyllic estate just outside London, in which Johnson had his own room and an extensive library and which was a sort of port-in-a-storm for him when his debilitating bouts of depression left him left him feeling completely out at sea. But Johnson’s tendency toward depression is—much like Churchill’s—a well-known and well-documented historical fact, attested to not only by numerous close friends and contemporaries but on many occasions by Johnson himself. Where Damrosch goes too far is in his overwrought and under-supported analysis of nearly every aspect of Johnson’s psyche—conclusions which are not well-documented by the historical record, and moreover tend only to muddle and confuse rather than clarify Johnson’s complex and multi-faceted personality—a personality which, like anyone else’s, surely doesn’t boil down so easily into a handful of reductive Freudian clichés. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation and condition of life. I will include one woman's words, at least; this is Fanny Burney, about the noted beauty Elizabeth Linley: "Had I been, for my sins, born of the male race, I should certainly have added one more to Miss Linley's train."

The only other problems I had with The Club are twofold, and in relation to the book’s upsides are details which don’t detract too much as a whole, but which are, nevertheless, both unappealing and unnecessary. And of course there are the examples of Johnson's acerbic wit. As he famously wrote, reading "Paradise Lost" was "a duty rather than a pleasure." Milton's epic, long the bane of students everywhere, was “one of the books which the reader admires, and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.” As with the vast majority of books that cover celebrities, the rich and famous, and how they spend their leisure time, this is trope and stereotype full, and doesn't really show any real evidence that the writer Ellery Lloyd is a pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team. This book feels like an OK daytime TV movie with no real surprises but with interesting enough (stereotype) characters that make it worth watching/reading. 4 out of 12, Two Star read... time to walk... Leo Damrosch is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature Emeritus at Harvard University but this is not a book for a closeted academic readership. With an eye for the telling detail and the emblematic anecdote, Damrosch brings the world of eighteenth century literary London vividly to life. It's a world populated by brilliant but flawed individuals beset by all the difficulties of class, sex, age, religion, and health, whose impact upon society is still felt today, and the author succeeds in making them wonderfully recognisableEven though Annie believes that she will always be a subordinate to Ned, she dreams of having more power over the Home Group. She dreams of what she might do differently if she were in control. Ned is angered by an article for which Annie was interviewed about Island Home. In the article, Annie is portrayed as taking a good deal of credit for the business. Ned vows to fire her when the weekend is over. Ned's threat and Annie's calm ability to lead after the tragic events begin suggest that Annie is responsible for some of the tragedy. Burke, for example, thought of himself as a Whig. However, he was such a traditionalist that he could probably have passed as a Tory. Like Johnson, he saw “subordination” as the key structure of “deference that kept society cooperative and peaceful” (165-166). Burke might have opposed taxing the Americans. He never thought, however, that they should themselves. Nor did he really think of that of the people in general. He believed in “government for the people by the entitled few” (165). When they are once found to be generally dull, all further labour may be spared, for to what use can the work be criticized that will not be read?"

If rich terrible people behaving appallingly is your jam then The Club is the book for you!' – Marian Keyes As an avid Johnsonian, I was amused by the book but learned very little. As has been remarked by others, the title is misnamed. The book focused entirely on the relationship between Boswell and Johnson, touching on some of the early members of Johnson’s conversational club here and there. The book had almost nothing to do with the club itself. While I know that the events of club meetings only exist within Boswell’s journals and his Life of Johnson, the author should have named the book something like Boswell and Johnson, an Unlikely Friendship. The book did remind me how misunderstood Samuel Johnson is. While he was guilty of much verbal condescension and, sometimes, cruelty, at bottom he was a man with a big heart who was largely beloved by the victims of his barbs. He was one of the foremost social commentators with his Rambler essays, the greatest lexicographer until James Murray and Bryan Garner, and a towering intellect. His single-handed composition of the first real dictionary of the English language with 40,000 entries and ten times that many representative quotations was perhaps the greatest act of non-scientific scholarship ever completed by a single person. Boswell, on the other hand, was a self-important, self-absorbed, narcissistic, arrogant, drunken, whore-mongering misogynist who accomplished only a single thing of note in his life, recording the words of Samuel Johnson and reproducing them in his biography. Boswell liked to pretend he was a gentleman, but his treatment of all women, including his wife, was unforgivable. In the end, he died the penniless loser that he was. I am, of course, grossly understating the significance and worth of Boswell's Johnson--one of the greatest biographies ever written and that could only have been written by an obsessed sycophant like Boswell, who took down seemingly every word uttered by the other during their 20+ year friendship. But that achievement in no way changes my opinion of its author. All this said, does anyone doubt that Donald Trump would love to have his own Boswell? There were some times at the beginning of the story where I found it difficult to figure out who’s storyline we were reading but after a while I got to know the characters and the way the chapters were written around them. Writing a sales pitch for a book like this is a daunting challenge. What could possibly be more tedious than a bunch of musty old 17th century Brits talking about Literature and Art and such? Fair point, I guess, but that ain't THIS book. This book is actually a pleasure to read. Damrosch is the perfect guide to the subject. He's an entertaining storyteller who knows his stuff, calls out pedantry when he sees it, is frequently quite funny, and helpfully takes that extra moment to explain what a particular word or phrase meant then as opposed to what it means now. And best of all, he presents the times and the personalities in the most lively, engaging, and generous manner. Samuel: Do you know what they call a puppy's mother?Johnson attended the excellent Lichfield Grammar School, where his intelligence was obvious. He spent one year at Oxford, relying on financial aid from a classmate, but when that aid was withdrawn he was forced to leave. At age 23 he married 46 year-old Elizabeth Porter, a widow with a substantial inheritance, and they set up Edial Hall School in Lichfield.We know who the murderer is from the beginning, so the only mystery aspect is her motive. Granted, the motive was not very predictable (for me anyway), but I found myself cringing when we did find out the motive. It seemed like a lot of build-up for a mediocre motive reveal. Damrosch, Leo. The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends who Shaped an Age. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. I don’t think I have hated a character so much as I have in this book. It was written perfectly and I just couldn’t believe some of the stuff that was being done in the name of revenge. There is mistrust for all the characters and their secrets as soon as you start the book but you can't help but read it as you need to find out more!

Travelling in a fast post chaise, a two- person open carriage pulled by two horses, they thoroughly entertained each other while chatting with locals and keeping copious notes on whereabouts and activities for the full six weeks. The tangible results were two very well-received books: Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1775, and Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, published much later in 1786 after Johnson's death. The Home club the ultimate globally franchised elite club for the people at the top of their global game! This book tells the story of the launch night of Island Home where the franchise decided to set up an entire island as a branch of their super-elite members only club. Their brand sees them overseeing branches all over the world with some of the highest quality performers, decor, services and more, but the question that's never really been asked is how do they raise so much money to provide the services they do from their very rich but limited membership?

Evergreen classics for book club books

The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members' clubs dotted across the globe, where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in its five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of fans and the media. Lucy has left her job after an affair with her boss (which she is still somewhat ashamed of), and is living in a village. She has become good friends with the other young people in the village: Maggie, Rebecca and Tom. Into their midst comes Alice, renting one of the cottages. She's the one who suggests the book club of the title. As for Lucy, she's put on edge by Alice, and comes to suspect that Alice is there to get revenge and destroy her life - but what could her motive possibly be?

Simon Vance, the narrator, has a very pleasant voice and he handles Scottish, Irish, and American accents adroitly. I particularly liked the regional accent he used for Dr. Johnson's voice. Samuel Johnson, p.352Although his wit remained savage when warranted; this is Johnson from the same era, on the forgettable poems of Mark Akenside: What it isn't, though, is a thoroughly rigorous or exhaustive exhuming of the careers of the other club members. Think of this , rather, as a personable, winning, urbane and wise set of Very Short Introductions to Burke, Gibbon, Sheridan, Smith and others, energetic little electrons orbiting around a nucleus composed of one unique atom of pious, maddeningly/winningly High Church Tory Johnsonium ever-fixedly fused to one (& thankfully one and only) bawdy, egoistic atom of Boswellia. There is so much to approve of and forgive in each of their lives to recount here, but Damrosch's lively and erudite narrative serves as a steadying corrective to Boswell's book in places (though I am only just past half way through that agreeable, highly readable beast), and would also give the casual reader many of the high points of that book without its attendant longueurs (tho those are the whole point, really). I came to understand that there is a unique set of pressures that public scrutiny exerts on a person over time, how intense the need to not be seen—to go somewhere you wouldn’t be judged for not being the fictional version of yourself a fan had their head—must be, especially in the age of the camera phone.” Joseph Epsein's rave review: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-club... [paywalled. Ask if you would like a copy].Each of the character’s secrets were interesting, and it was easy to see that they didn’t trust their friends completely as they mostly dealt with the secrets they were keeping by themselves. It was also interesting to see just how easy the odd comment from an outsider caused a rift in the friendships and it made me wonder were they really that close in the first place?