The Club (2019) is Leo Damrosch's entertaining history of the London Literary Club, an assemblage of major 18th century figures in English arts that met weekly at London's Turk's Head Tavern. A Harvard professor, Demrosch is the perfect interpreter of that diverse group and of its consequences. This is a delightful history of the literary scene in 18th century England, beautifully told in both words and paintings from the time, each with a commentary that brings them to life and sets their connection to the storyline. I think this book would be interesting and enjoyable even if you knew very little about these people, or haven't read Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson.

p.40Damrosch often quotes from Johnson's own landmark A Dictionary of the English Language as well, as his source for contemporary definitions of words whose meanings have shifted. Dr. Johnson was a legendary 18th-century wit, critic, lexicographer, playwright, travelogue writer, literary scholar, and all-around intellectual colossus who is probably best known today for his brilliantly comprehensive and hugely influential dictionary of the English language—one of the earliest dictionaries and still regarded as one of the best: an epic and Herculean achievement by any measure. The characters and their secrets were great, I loved how they seeped out gradually over the course of the book and that the books chosen for the book club would reflect each of them. They were written very cleverly, the atmosphere was built up perfectly and the switching between the timelines made it all come together in the end. 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 He spent one year at Oxford, relying on financial aid from a classmate, but when that aid was withdrawn he was forced to leave.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.From the author of People Like Her comes a smart and sinister murder mystery set in the secretive world of exclusive celebrity clubs. I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured. The book’s main narrative is somewhat haphazardly structured around the titular “Club,” though Damrosch is never quite able to turn this into the thematic centerpiece he clearly wants it to be. In a somewhat desperate attempt to keep it relevant, even if only as a sort of thinly liminal connective tissue, Damrosch lumps the female characters in the story (who weren’t actual members of the all-male “Club”) into the creatively, if somewhat comically, named “ shadow Club.” More on that in a moment. As an American, I am inclined to see the late 18th century in terms of our country’s rebellion and subsequent establishment of a separate nation. It was fascinating to think of those events against the highly developed culture and nuanced views from the mother country. The key figures all had opinions about empire and about colonizing other lands. This is one topic on which there was wide disagreement among these sharp minds. The other was the Christian religion. Leo Damrosch’s “The Club” - Is absolutely NOT one of these. This absolute gem of a novel is instantly accessible, engaging & oddly compelling, given that it is not necessarily content that is contrary to expectation nor revelatory. But what the author does, is write with such flow & unbridled enthusiasm & love that I simply

Really, really enjoyed Professor Damrosch's tour and company. As a now-budding 18C dilletante, I say that this is the perfect book to accompany any reading of Boswell's justly celebrated The Life of Samuel Johnson.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?

In the Decline and Fall Gibbon states as a truism: "Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many." Alice moves to a small town and presents the idea of starting a book club with a group of friends, presumably to get to know them better and fit in. But the truth of the matter is… she wants revenge. Listened to this one on audio, which had its pros and cons. The narrator, Tamaryn Payne, did an okay job at keeping the story moving and attempting to give each POV character a distinct voice. Her American accents were a bit stilted, but overall not awful. The biggest problem--there are WAY TOO MANY POV CHARACTERS. It's not Payne's fault there are so many and that they are virtually indistinguishable from each other. I couldn't keep the PA separated from the head of housekeeping separated from this or that celebrity, nor could I keep which bad person did what bad thing to whichever other bad person. There was not really one redeemable character in the bunch and I couldn't tell who was really who by the end and I didn't care (see above). 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? 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...Sometimes when reading nonfiction, one can begin to feel the moment where as the reader, it all becomes a little dull. Not through the subject or even any real fault of the author at all, but because it’s the nature of many nonfiction reads that at some point you must hit “reset” & switch to fiction or have a break for a day or so..

Enter Alice, who moves in next door to Lucy, Alice knows exactly who Lucy is and wants revenge...and if she finds out the secrets of the other 3 in the ‘clique’ then the more the merrier and so via a Book Club where she chooses books to match their ‘crimes’ chaos suddenly arrives, and life will never be the same for any of them The Home Group is a collection of ultra-exclusive private members' clubs and a global phenomenon, and the opening of its most ambitious project yet – Island Home, a forgotten island transformed into the height of luxury – is billed as the celebrity event of the decade. The reader is also urged to pay attention to the chapters on Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon. This book is a magnificent picture of 18th century London. The story follows Lucy who has moved to a cottage in the Cotswolds after an affair with her boss. She moved for a fresh start and has found her feet with a group of friends who all seem relatively close. That is until a newcomer, Alice, moves in next door to Lucy and turns her world upside down. Lucy always knows there’s something she doesn’t trust about Alice, but she can’t seem to quite put her finger on it. Alice finds out secrets about everyone in the friendship group and, after suggesting a book club for them all, manages to suggest or manipulate other people into suggesting books similar to each of the secrets they have hidden from each other.

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The others do matter. They are especially interesting in this era of English colonial power. Burke was an ally for the American colonists as well as those under British rule in India. Gibbon became fascinated with Rome, and its decline, in part because of what he was seeing in England and America; the common topic is empire. Adam Smith accurately prophesied the rise of industrial England in the next century. 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. Alright. So given that I did, in fact, find this book to be engaging and interesting, my continual carping and kvetching may seem to some like the proverbial ingrate who Uncle Junior describes in an early episode of The Sopranos as having “ a Virginia ham under one arm,” but keeps “ singing the blues ‘cause she got no bread.”