So, as I said in my post this morning introducing the Not the TV Book Group, each of the four of us chose four books, which were then whittled down to two each this afternoon. We each told you we’d be back later today with the list of books, and now I can – along with my colleagues – reveal the final eight, along with the dates we’ll be discussing them:

Sunday 7 Feb: Brodeck’s Report by Philippe Claudel (Quercus)
Sunday 21 Feb: The Girl with the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books)
Sunday 7 March: Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers (Two Ravens Press)
Sunday 21 March: The Illusionist by Jennifer Johnston (Headline)
Sunday 11 April [we're skipping Easter Sunday]: The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan (Henry Holt & Co.)
Sunday 25 April: Skin Lane by Neil Bartlett (Serpent’s Tail)
Sunday 9 May: A Short Gentleman by Jon Canter (Vintage)
Sunday 23 May: Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler (Warner Books)

We’re each posting the reasons why we’ve chosen the books we have. These are my two selections:

Vanessa and Virginia by Susan Sellers

I have loved and have been fascinated by Virginia Woolf ever since I first read her work at university, both as an author and as a woman. I have also been intrigued by her relationship with her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell. This fictionalized account of their childhood relationship, then, was bound to pique my interest. On top of that, Susan Sellers is a Woolf expert, and it was published by the wonderful Two Ravens Press. They published Lisa Glass’s novel Prince Rupert’s Teardrop, which was, as you might remember, one of my favourite reads of last year. It remains to be seen whether my fellow group members will be as interested, but I know there is at least one other Woolf fan in DGR.

In a gloomy house in Hyde Park Gate, two young girls are raised to be perfect ladies. But from the beginning Vanessa Bell and her sister Virginia Woolf pursue different dreams, and in their Bloomsbury household they create a ferment of free thinking and even freer living. Devoted to each other, yet fiercely competitive, both sisters fight to realise their artistic vision amidst a chaos of desire, scandal, illness and war. Traced with lyrical intensity, their intertwined lives gradually reveal an underlying pattern. Only at the end of this fascinating work does the real nature of the relationship between Virginia and Vanessa become clear.

A Short Gentleman by Jon Canter

I actually own this in hardback. I bought it on a complete and utter whim well over a year ago, purely on the strength of the blurb when I spotted it on the shelves of the dearly departed Borders in Oxford. I had never heard of the author, and I’d never heard of the book. I didn’t see any newspaper reviews, nor any blogposts about it, and I haven’t since. This novel is, ultimately, a bit of a mystery to me. The Not the TV Book Group, then, gave me a good reason to pick it up from the shelf, and I’m thrilled that my fellow bloggers were prepared to give it a go too. I’m really looking forward to it, especially given its description as a comic novel – everyone likes a giggle, don’t they?

An intellectual giant but an emotional pygmy, Robert struggles to come to terms with the forces that brought him down: Elizabeth, the wife who wanted him to change, Judy Page, the ex-girlfriend who came back to haunt him, Pilkington, the childhood bully who grew into an adult bully, Mike Bell, the old friend Robert was always happy to patronise. Finally, there’s his father, who proved, at the end of his life, not to be the man Robert thought he was. Despite everything, Robert remains heroically determined to carry on being the same magnificently pompous and self-righteous man he always was, utterly resistant to therapy, change and the emotional demands of the opposite sex.

To find out why the others chose the books they did, do visit their blogs: Dovegrey Reader, Savidge Reads, kimbofo.

We’ll see you at DGR’s in two weeks’ time!