Local Reading Groups

“Reading brings us unknown friends”

Honoré de Balzac

 
We love to support reading in all its forms and especially Reading Groups. If you would like to be put in touch with any of the groups mentioned in these pages please do contact us.
 

The Abingdon Gardens Book Club

We are a group of twelve aged 17-85 reading all genres and meeting monthly.  Here we are having a cup of tea, talking about Anne Cleeves’ latest, The Long Call, which we loved and highly recommend. All her main characters are deep, intelligent and thoughtful and as always, a brilliant and complex story is brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Another book we have loved is Blue Tide Rising, a fabulous debut novel from Clare Stevens. This was a real page turner with great characters who immediately came alive. The number of challenging topics covered could have been a problem,  but they were dealt with in such a knowledgeable way that the issues flowed seamlessly together as Amy’s back story unfolded. We loved the contrast of city and countryside, especially the descriptions of Nottingham, ‘our home town’. This book provided so much to talk about and ponder. A great work of fiction and we look forward to Clare’s next project.

Burton Joyce Library Readers’ Group

Our book group meets on the 2nd Monday of the month in Burton Joyce Library and is themed rather than us all reading the same book. For example, we covered “Love” when we met on Valentine’s Day, and have discussed Irish Writers, Nature Writing and Memoires. Popular authors in the Irish category were William Trevor and Sebastian Barry, both pretty unremittingly sad.

Bleasby WI Book Group

We are a group of members of Bleasby WI who meet in our local pub – The Wagon and Horses on Gypsy Lane – to discuss our latest book choice.  We meet on a Friday at 2.15pm for a 2.30pm start. The date of our next meeting is decided on at the meeting, usually in 4 to 6 weeks time. We read a wide range of books obtaining as many copies as possible from the library.

Chatsworth Book Group

We are called Chatsworth Book Group as we mostly meet on Chatsworth Avenue in Southwell, on Thursday mornings at monthly intervals. Our book at the moment is Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes. We read an eclectic range of titles … forthcoming books include The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, and Hilary Mantel’s Fludd. Thanks to The Bookcase for all your support, and we wish you continued success!

Lowdham Cast Offs Knit and Knatter Group

What “purls” of wisdom can I share with you about the Lowdham Cast Offs? We meet on the last Friday of each month at The Bookcase in Lowdham – I usually provide the cakes and Jane provides the coffee.

  Book Cakes made by Jane Waites

We started in March 2012 and are registered with Let’s Knit magazine – it was great seeing the group’s name in print! We have a monthly newsletter and a Facebook page under Lowdham Cast Offs. We are a friendly bunch of mixed talents and always welcome any new fellow knitter.

Arnold NWR Book Group

We are a sub-group of the Arnold National Women’s Register branch, meeting 6 times a year. Over the years we have read a variety of genres including historical, crime, sci-fi, teenage literature and fantasy. Recently we looked at short stories, their style, how they must differ from the novel and their value. Our next book is My Dear, I Wanted To Tell You by Louisa Young.

Lowdham Library Reading Group

We’re a group of 12  from Lowdham and surrounding villages. The group was set up in about 1999 by Eve Griffiths and friends and is led by Eve (who works at The Bookcase). We choose books from a wide selection provided by The Nottinghamshire Library Service and have very informal monthly meetings in Lowdham Library. On occasion, when we open our box of books, our chosen title has been substituted for something else, which pushes us out of our comfort zone and provides for wide-ranging discussions. We also go to the theatre and other literary events together.

Southwell Pub Book Group

We have moved ‘homes’ a few times (not because of our behaviour!), so we hope The Final Whistle is our final and lasting venue. We have previously met at The Hearty Goodfellow, The Bramley and The Old Coach House.  Liz Froggat (ex The Bookshop in  Southwell) started the group in April 2010 and we’ve maintained it as a lively collection of about 10 – ages ranging from (guesstimate!) late 30’s to late 70’s – who meet each month on the first Wednesday of the month from 8pm in The Pullman Room at The Final Whistle, Station Road, Southwell with occasional social outings to the theatre or book festivals.  We are open to reading books of any genre and each member takes it in turn to present a book that they’ve read and enjoyed. We recently read ‘The Glass Room’ by Simon Mawer which was a fascinating and engaging novel starting just before WW2 and following the relationships and life of the Landauer family with their unusually designed home as the central theme.

We keep in touch through a monthly newsletter, What’s App group and our Facebook page, facebook.com/FinalWhistleBookGroup.

Footnotes

Our book group meets monthly on a Tuesday morning in Southwell. We have eclectic tastes and try to include books stretch our horizons. A recent example might be Black Water Rising by Attica Locke, a debut crime novel set in Texas. This year the group has been going for 10 years and we celebrated with a day out in Derbyshire. Our photo shows us enjoying refreshments!

Woodborough Reading Group

We meet on the second Wednesday in the month. This is our tenth year as a group with most of our members being the original enthusiasts! We have a system whereby we have a planning meeting and all members bring their own suggestions so we have a wide range of genres and themes. This leads to some very lively and entertaining discussions and we always feel that we have had a good evening.  We enjoy memoirs such as This Boy by Alan Johnson, My Secret Sister by Helen Edwards and The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair Mc Kay. We enjoy thrillers and detective novels, those set in the wars, historical fiction along with many other fiction and non-fiction works. We have struggled to find books which are genuinely amusing so would be grateful for any suggestions. We did, however, enjoy The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett. 

A Group With No Name

Our book group doesn’t have a name. We currently have 15 members who come from Southwell and surrounding villages. We meet in each other’s houses at 19:30 on the 2nd Monday of every month except in August. We choose books recommended by members with the general requirement that the person recommending should actually have read the book!  From the books we have read this year I would recommend  Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. It reads like a novel but is actually a factual account of life, and death, in a Mumbai slum. It is both shocking and, at times, very funny.

U3A Book Group

We meet monthly and are now meeting face to face after 18 months or so of Zoom meetings. One of the good things that came out of using Zoom was that we now have questions allocated to each person and have realised that this really ups our game so we are continuing in this vein.

At our September 2021 meeting the Reverend Richard Coles’ book, “The Madness of Grief”, which Coles wrote  after the death of his partner, David, provoked lengthy debate.  It wasn’t a difficult read but dealt with difficult subject matter.  All of us felt tearful at times whilst reading it and some of us would perhaps rather not have read it.  However, grief is both difficult and inevitable and we all agreed that Coles dealt with the subject with a raw honesty.  As a very public figure and a vicar, he was subjected to a fair amount of hostility and abuse – for his homosexuality and for his high media profile.  But nobody could read the book and not feel sympathy for him nor doubt his grief. Yes we thought one can become unhinged and out of control with grief and that yes that is a form of temporary madness.

Our discussion ranged from the church’s attitude to homosexuality, our reaction to alcoholism and whether it was deliberate that this cause of David’s death was not referred to until half way through the book, whether we thought Coles’ public figure role made him more relatable, and we also managed to fit in cake and two gate-crashers: Trevor who had read the book and David Sheath whose 80th birthday it was and whose wife didn’t want to miss the discussion!