reading group
Our reading group has been held once a month since 2003. Regular members of the group take turns in choosing a book for everybody to read and talk about together so we tackle a wide variety of material (fiction, non-fiction, poetry). We take special care to ensure that everybody gets an equal opportunity to speak and be listened to. We come together to share our diverse views and appreciate our differences in a spirit of curiosity and respect. Attendance is generally at the level of around seven regular members, though we are occasionally pleasantly surprised to be joined by someone else who has found out about us, either through the website or the newsletter. The group has a relaxed atmosphere and newcomers are welcome to come along and join us.
Click here to download our group covenants and background information for leaders (as a PDF).
Click to see: Books we've read... UWG Reading Group Article... 25th Reading Group Article...
Forthcoming Sessions
Tuesday 27th July 2010, 7-9pm
"The Case for God" by Karen Armstrong
Tuesday 31st August 2010, 7-9pm
"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell
Tuesday 28th September 2010, 7-9pm
"Howard's End is on the Landing" by Susan Hill
THIS WILL BE THE 75th MEETING OF THE READING GROUP!!!
Tuesday 26th October 2010, 7-9pm
"Somewhere Towards the End" by Diana Athill
Tuesday 23rd November 2010, 7-9pm
"Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel
Books we've tackled since summer 2003:
Click here to view the whole list of books we've read at LibraryThing.
71. "Head Trip" by Jeff Warren
70. "A Book of Silence" by Sara Maitland
69. "Father and Son" by Edmund Gosse
68. "Notes From an Exhibition" by Patrick Gale
67. "Maurice" by E.M. Forster
66. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Simon Armitage
65. "The Other Hand" by Chris Cleave
64. "Hitchhiking to Heaven" by Rabbi Lionel Blue
63. "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
62. "Plain and Simple" by Sue Bender
61. "Period Piece" by Gwen Raverat
60. "Driving Over Lemons" by Chris Stewart
59. "Touching the Void" by Joe Simpson
58. "The Maytrees" by Annie Dillard
57. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks
56. "In the Country of Men" by Hisham Matar
55. "The Green Knight" by Iris Murdoch
54. "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky
53. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominque Bauby
52. "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" by Margaret Craven
51. "Under My Skin" by Doris Lessing
50. "The Wrong Boy" by Willy Russell
49. "Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks
48. "Waterlog" by Roger Deakin
47. "Bee Season" by Myla Goldberg
46. "Justine" by Lawrence Durrell
45. "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman
44. "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult
43. "Saturday" by Ian McEwan
42. "Of Water and the Spirit" by Malidoma Patrice Some
41. "Beginners Guide to Changing the World" by Isabel Losada
40. "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson
39. "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" by Marina Lewycka
38. "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger
37. "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruis Zafon
36. "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston
35. "March" by Geraldine Brooks
34. "Larry's Party" by Carol Shields
33. "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
32. "The World's Wife" by Carol Ann Duffy
31. "Gem Squash Tokoloshe" by Rachel Zadok
30. "An Evil Cradling" by Brian Keenan
29. "Journal of a Solitude" by May Sarton
28. "Theo's Odyssey" by Catherine Clement
27. "Making History" by Stephen Fry
26. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
25. "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin
24. "The Saddlebag" by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani
23. "The Matisse Stories" by A.S. Byatt
22. "The Outsider" by Albert Camus
21. "Anne Hughes: Her Boke" Edited by Mollie Preston
20. "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
19. "Refuge" by Terry Tempest Williams
18. "Mr. Golightly's Holiday" by Salley Vickers
17. "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
16. "Where Angels Fear to Tread" by E.M. Forster
15. "The Knitting Sutra" by Susan G. Lydon
14. "Crescent" by Diana Abu-Jaber
13. "Toast" by Nigel Slater
12. "According to Mary" by Marianne Fredriksson
11. "Silas Marner" by George Eliot
10. "The Bookseller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad
9. "Astonishing Splashes of Colour" by Clare Morall
8. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
7. "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali
6. "Burmese Days" by George Orwell
5. "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
4. "Hotel World" by Ali Smith
3. "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver
2. "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
1. "Buddha Da" by Anne Donovan
UWG Article about the Reading Group
Juliet Edwards wrote the following piece about our book group for the Unitarian Women's Group newsletter in March 2006:
"Isn't it strange that a book which we thought wasn't all that
well written has stimulated a really interesting discussion."
We were talking about 'According to Mary' by Marianne Fredriksson. It's a novel in which an ageing Mary Magdalene remembers Jesus' ministry. To be fair it could well have been a translation which did not do justice to its Swedish author.
Our Reading Engagement Group at Essex Church, Kensington, has been holding its monthly meetings for over two years now. I have doubled the number of books that I read in a year. All of us have read authors who are new to us. We take it in turn to recommend a book. We have made it a rule that at least one of the group has to have read the book chosen so that we don't end up with a dud. For instance I wanted to read George Eliot's 'Silas Marner' (I tend to like to get the classics under my belt) and Patricia said that she had read it, so it became my choice for the month. It led to an interesting discussion about child care and about being a child.
There have been a number of relevant up-to-date choices. 'The Bookseller of Kabul' by Asne Seierstad, 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini are both about Afghanistan and 'Crescent' by Diana Abu Jaber is about an Iraqi-American woman who works as a cook in a cafe in Los Angeles. The descriptions of the aromatic foods she prepares are marvellous.
Almost all of the books we have chosen have been novels but they don't have to be and mostly the people who attend are women but the group is open to all. Because it's an engagement group it always begins with a reading and candle lighting and finishes with closing words. We are reminded to be in 'right relationship' with one another and so each person can depend on being listened to.
Reading Group: Our 25th Book! (in 2005)
Click here to view photographs of book group activities (on Flickr).
Our reading engagement group started back in June 2003 and celebrated its 25th session in September 2005. We marked the occasion with a cake and Patricia Walker-Hesson brought along copies of all 25 books we had tackled up to that point. Several members looked back over the selections of the last few years and picked out their favourite books of those we had read together...
Caroline Blair: First a confession: I hardly ever read fiction. In the case of almost every book in the book group I have had to force myself to start it. Aaagh! Science fiction! A laugh-free French novella! Three quiet, rather uneventful short stories! But each time I have finished the book feeling that I have gained something. Special mention for 'Mr Golightly's Holiday', where an engrossing web of village stories gradually turned into something quite different. I have chosen it for the second time of reading, which consists of a gleeful spotting of the clues missed the first time round.
Betty Evans: It was hard for me to choose between Barbara Kingsolver's "Prodigal Summer" and Terry Tempest Williams' "Refuge" - I loved both books. In the end I decided that Prodigal Summer just has (for me) the edge over Refuge. Barbara Kingsolver is a poet, a biologist and a wonderful author and her prose is haunting in the bringing together in 3 different stories, of the four main characters - a wildlife biologist, a young Polish girl recently widowed and left to manage her American husband's failing farm, and two elderly people, coming to terms with their age, having been feuding neighbours for years. All this is set to a background of the forests, the farmlands and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I've read it twice, effortlessly, and now that I'm writing about it I want to read it all over again - I can't say that about many books (except Refuge!).
Jane Blackall: My two favourite books were exactly the same as Betty's... so I'll say a little about "Refuge", Terry Tempest Williams' semi-autobiographical story. The book is set in the 1980s and charts the environmental changes as water levels in Utah's Great Salt Lake rose to record heights, threatening the creatures who depend on a migratory bird refuge there. It also describes the relationships between several generations of women in her family, and explores her mother's response to being diagnosed with cancer, against a background of the supportive Mormon community she grew up in. I found it fascinating to read about the way their faith permeated every aspect of their lives and held them all together. The struggles and joys of Terry Tempest Williams' extended family are reflected in descriptions of the natural cycles of the land and wildlife that she loves.
Juliet Edwards: Two books particularly stand out from the 25 that the reading group has selected. They have similarities in that they are both about people who make a tremendous effort to achieve something in their lives. Both books have scenes set in areas that I know. In "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" we experience Christopher's terror when his search for his mother leads him to have to cope with the London tube system for the first time - "then there was a sound like people fighting with swords and I could feel a strong wind and a roaring started and I closed my eyes..." Christopher is 15 and has Asperger's syndrome. In "Brick Lane", Nasneem comes to London as a result of an arranged marriage. We see a whole cast of characters who live in the area described with Dickensian clarity. Towards the end of the book there is a heart stopping chase along Brick Lane as Nasneem searches for her twelve year old daughter who is asserting her independence rather than get ready for the family's return flight to Bangaladesh.
Patricia Walker-Hesson: I find it difficult to choose a favourite book from all those the Book Group has tackled. What I like in a book, especially, is to learn about how other people live - especially in far-flung countries where I am unlikely to go or in communities of which I am not a part. I am fascinated to learn that one of the protagonists in The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini), which is set mostly in Afghanistan, eats toasted naan bread with marmalade for breakfast. I am amazed to read that the children can pick ripe pomegranates from the trees and that there are so many that they can even be used as missiles - that when so used the pomegranates are ripe enough that they burst and their bright red juice splatters everywhere. I think of the leather hard pomegranates on the stall at the top of my road. In The Bookseller of Kabul (Asne Seierstad) I learned that the burka had been used for centuries in Afghanistan but not by large numbers. It was reintroduced by King Habibullah from 1901 to 1919 who decreed that the two hundred women in his harem should wear the burka so as not to entice other men with their pretty faces. The burka became a garment of the upper classes, shielding women from the eyes of the masses. In Refuge Terry Tempest Williams tells us that in the Mormon religion, formal blessings of healing are given by men through the Priesthood of God. Women have no outward authority. But within the secrecy of sisterhood women have always bestowed benisons upon their families. These snippets bear no relationship one to the other but illustrate the little things which light up a book for me.
last updated: 23 Jul 2010
