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Saturday, June 18, 2016

Celebrating Book Clubs

Today, June 18, is National Group Reading Day in Great Britain.  The day is sponsored by The Reading Agency, “a charity whose mission is to inspire more people to read more, encourage them to share their enjoyment of reading and celebrate the difference that reading makes to all our lives” (https://readingagency.org.uk/about/).


The first book club to which I belonged has minutes of meetings dating back to 1938, making THE Timmins Book Club one of the oldest in North America.  We were featured on LitLovers.com:  http://www.litlovers.com/featured-clubs/timmins-book-club.



In honour of the day, I also thought I’d feature popular reading group books.  A British perspective is offered by The Reading Agency which conducted a survey and released its list of the most popular reading group books: 
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I was amazed to realize that I’ve read 9 of the books on that list; The Miniaturist is the only novel I have not read.

Recently, BookRiot also recently issued a list of the top 12 book club books:
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Room by Emma Donoghue
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
I’ve read 7 of these; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Me Before You, The Nightingale, Americanah, and Big Little Lies are the 5 I haven’t yet read.

And for a lighter look at book clubs, see http://www.cbc.ca/baroness/blog/book-club?utm_content=buffer2a78c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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