Choice time at the book club

What are the hot picks for holiday reading? Books editor MARGIE THOMSON asks what's top of the list for members of the Titirangi Book Group.

Bookclubs - talkfests with a purpose, often accompanied by wine or supper - have proliferated like mushrooms in the Auckland literary-social scene.

Some of these groupings borrow the formality and structure of organisations such as the WEA, while others tease out their own structure and reading programme in a casual-yet-determined manner like the Titirangi Book Group, who this week give us their recommendations for holiday reading.

Whether high-brow or not-so, these clubs are an increasingly de rigueur part of being a booklover in today's busy environment: a way of combining social contact with mind-expansion - multi-tasking in that valuable discretionary time between dinner and bed.

The Titirangi Book Group, which Life editor Carroll du Chateau belongs to, is one of at least five in the foothills of the Waitakeres.

Members meet on the last Tuesday of every month for stimulating, wide-ranging conversation about books in general, including anything from 10 minutes to a half-an-hour's discussion on the set text they agreed to the previous month.

The entire group, which swells to 12 when everyone makes it, rarely agrees.

"Last month, for example, we read David Lodge's new book, Thinks ... " says du Chateau. "Some people liked it, others totally loathed it. Then the discussion blossomed out to a debate about whether men really could write convincingly in the female voice - especially their inner voice. As usual we decided to disagree on that, too."

Last week, when the group met for their end of year dinner at Cafe Boss overlooking the kauris of Titirangi, with the books they intend to devour over the holidays, they produced an interesting - if fairly earnest - reading list.

And interestingly, despite reading much the same material during the year only one book was chosen by more than one member: the book shaping up as one of the best-read New Zealand novels of the year, and a serious contender for next year's Montana Book Awards, C.K. Stead's The Secret History of Modernism.

People's various interests angled their holiday reading. Jenny Smith, "being Australian," as she says, put Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang at the top of her list ("I loved Oscar and Lucinda"). Her summer reading programme is easily the most ambitious of the group.

As well as tackling the Carey, she intends to read Niall Williams' heartrending account of hard times in rural, 19th-century Ireland, The Fall of Light; Tim Winton's Dirt Music, and last year's Booker Prize winner, Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.

Cynthia Smith (no relation) has picked Diamond Dust by Anita Desai, "a meeting of Eastern and Western culture which seemed appropriate in the present climate", and A Good House by Bonnie Burnard, "because I liked the cover and it has heaps of recommendations on the back."

Pauline McCowan anticipates hours of solid, fascinating pleasure from Peter Ackroyd's London: The Biography. As she says, "it's the world's greatest city, the loveliest, most exciting - and my daughter lives there."

In contrast and for sheer, simple enjoyment this librarian is looking forward to that other big fat book: the fourth Harry Potter, The Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling.

Moira Haywood is keenly anticipating travelling in her mind From London to Lowestowe with Hunter Davies, English novelist and biographer, and husband of Margaret Forster. Davies' style is rather like Bill Bryson, she says, as he follows in J.B. Priestly's 1935 footsteps, detouring to visit Paul McCartney's house.

Then there is Erin Woodhams, who yearns to move out of the country and live nearer to good bookshops and is looking forward to The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by C.E. Karhart, for its "twin delights of the piano and Parisian life", and Ellice Steinbach's Without Reservations, travels of an independent woman.

Claire Geddes, who runs a large garden overlooking both harbours in Titirangi, has already ordered Permaculture A Manual For Design from the library and is part-way through her other holiday treat, Michael King's Tread Softly, for you Tread on My Life.

Karen Nero has made some serious, thoughtful selections for her holiday read-fest: James Kowan's A Troubador's Testament, and Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, with Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter to follow for a little light relief.

Carroll du Chateau is looking forward to Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux, the story of his friendship of empathy, solidarity and rivalry with V.S. Naipaul that lasted more than 30 years, plus Hooking Up, a collection of essays and fiction by Tom Wolfe ("the man who spotted the 'me' generation") .

The two male members of the group have extremely different tastes. Architect Nick Malloy is keen to read books by two of New Zealand's most established literary lights: Allen Curnow's last collection, The Bells of St Babel, and C.K. Stead's latest novel.

Tony Lawrence, orthodontist and viticulturalist, put the natural environment at the top of his reading list, choosing Philip Simpson's wonderful history of Te Kouka, the cabbage tree, Dancing Leaves, as his deckchair companion. And when he's finished that, he hopes to have tracked down a copy of Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lonborg, which is shortly to be reprinted.

Kerry Gould, the group's psychologist, chose two novels: Anita Desai's Feasting and Fasting ("generations and cultures collide") and Pilgrim by Timothy Findlay ("Jung, analysis and travails of life set in Switzerland in the 1920s-30s").