I’m in London for work and this morning I’ve been reading via the Poetry Foundation’s poetry app. Worth downloading if you don’t already have it. I’ve been reading poems of Sophie Jewett, a poet I don’tremember reading before. Jowett is an American living through the second half of the nineteenth century. The poems have a strange, slightly nightmarish edge, though othertimes perhaps a little over sweet. I got interested in ‘Defeated’ and ‘Destiny’. Who is she talking to here? A lover? God? The sense of an underpinning presence of – is it? – love is powerful:
Defeated
When the last fight is lost, the last sword broken;
The last call sounded, the last order spoken;
When from the field where braver hearts lie sleeping,
Faint, and athirst, and blinded, I come creeping,
With not one waving shred of palm to bring you,
With not one splendid battle-song to sing you,
O Love, in my dishonor and defeat,
Your measureless compassion will be sweet.
readerjanedavis 
As u know been to various grps over the years !!! on the whole wld say it is best to let the grp have some say with what we are reading but as u say the leader tends to bring a selection with them and have a voting system this only works if people can add up as I have been in a grp were added up wrong and read a certain book which no-one wanted and grp slowly dwindled downward !!
I have also been in a grp were the leader will come in saying ” this is what we are reading so of course for the duration of the book it will be ” we never had a say ”
Their are a books written relatively recently which reckon would go down well shadow of the wind by something zeon or what ever and the light we cannot see prob not the da vinci code .
THEIR IS some saying about you cant please all the people all of the time (think thats it ) and in the my play reading grp just impossible to please all of them so tough !!!!!!!!
as someone will tend to go dont like that or have read it but on the whole if just one or two it tends to be majority rules or have been known to say “if really hate it maybe i cld give your ring when finished !!!!
I have sometimes left a grp if cant stand it and just say ” dont stop reading it on my account !!!
actually to many factors to think about leaving it their