My take:
THE DINNER, by Herman Koch, begins a bit slowly but then progresses to a wonderful sardonic portrayal of the behaviour of the type of people who have money, reputation, fine clothes, perhaps a 'successful' political career, and a rather stupid narcissism, who maintain a deeply false image of themselves by walking into expensive restaurants and having waiters and restaurant managers grovel before them. I read about 50 pages and found myself laughing more and more at the very fine observations of behavior, then I took a nap, looking forward to the mounting ridiculousness of these clowns when I woke up. Then, when I woke up, I found that the nature of the story changed abruptly to very dark considerations of urban brutality and hypocrisy, and revelations about the, literally insane, violent characters, who are not at all what I had thought they were - with continuing spurts of absurd, dark, violent humor. I did nothing that day but read this fine novel, beginning to end - I found it as much of a page-turner as any good detective story, except that it was brilliant, original and a really significant contribution to anyone interested in modern urban life and the hollow pretensions and dangers of the stupidly rich and famous.
Example: psychotic man beating school principal to a pulp, looks up to find he is being watched by many students, spots his son, waves and smiles, without stopping.
Herman Koch is a very fine, observant, intelligent writer.

The next book club meeting will be on Wednesday, November 15, 18:30, at The Park. The book will be SEX AT DAWN, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, available (VPN needed) from docs.google.com (downloadable) and, apparently, elsewhere.
The Kunming Book Club has a wechat group in which many regular attendees participate, but is open to all. Readings, locations and times of meets are chosen by attendees. New participants welcome.

OK, vicar, fine, but a little sense of humour, please.

@redjon: Nothing wrong with kids having fun. I've carved pumpkins, as a kid. But what IS a pumpkin-carving knife, anyway?
(By the way, some of the above comments were meant to be humorous - nothing wrong with adults having fun. Quite possibly some people didn't laugh. But then I've seen some pretty halfass-carved pumpkins too).

My pirate solution works good. Not sure what I'd do with an ultrabook.

@nnoble: Rogue asteroids may indeed be a problem - possibly may be fired at me by my rogue alien countrymen, with whom I've had numerous disputes (sorry for any unavoidable collateral damage, but you probably shouldn't have been caught talking to me - i.e., it's your own fault).

We must colonize space as soon as possible, in order to defend ourselves.