Saturday 30 June 2012 not only marked the start of Independent Booksellers Week but it was also the second anniversary of National Reading Group Day the nationwide celebration of the huge grassroots affection for Book Clubs across the UK.
Unfortunately we don’t have a book exchange book club (yet…) but to do our bit we have scoured the internet to come up with the 12 books that have been read, enjoyed and recommended by various different reading groups.
So in no particular order here is your years’ worth of ‘must have’ book club reads:
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Margaret Atwood 'Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale?... |
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Toni Morrison It is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. For Sethe, Paul D. Halle and the... |
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T.C. Boyle When Delaney Mossbacher knocks down a Mexican pedestrian, he neither reports the accident nor takes his victim to hospital. Instead the man accepts $20 and... |
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Vladimir Nabokov The story of Humbert Humbert, poet and pervert, and his obsession with 12-year-old Dolores Haze. Determined to possess his "Lolita" both carnally... |
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A.S. Byatt Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize, this novel describes the romance between two 19th-century poets and the parallel relationship of their two biographers and... |
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J.G. Ballard The heartrending story of a British boy's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War... |
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon A murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's Syndrome. He knows a very... |
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James Ellroy It is Los Angeles, 11th January 1947. A beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was... |
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Hubert Selby Jr Hubert Selby Jr's classic and controversial masterpiece of the wild underside of New York life... |
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Carlos Ruiz Zafron A stunning literary thriller in the tradition of Umberto Eco. The discovery of a forgotten book leads to a hunt for an elusive author who may or may not... |
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his... |
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Julian Barnes Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in.. |
Is there a book that your group particularly enjoyed that didn’t make the list? Let us know and we’ll update the recommendations periodically. We would love to have your reviews for any books your group have discussed so please feel free to leave collective reviews on our book pages.
And for anyone interested in starting or running a book group check out the readinggroups.org website for hints, tips, guidance and advice as well as some fantastic competitions – this month alone you could win Chris Cleave, Victoria Hislop, or Jojo Moyes to join your book group…
