Each month, we sit down with a Dublin bookclub to find out what reading delights they’ve been sampling. From those that have been going for 20 years, to those in their earliest beginnings, we’ve met bookclubs that are full of old friends, new acquaintances, colleagues, neighbours, and everyone in between. What they all have in common is a shared curiosity and a love of reading.
You might even be inspired to start your own …
“What happens in book club… stays in book club!”
Emma Curley, Dublin 8 via Limerick
Supportive, long-lasting (10 years and counting!), fun, interesting, iconoclastic, silly, serious never dull!
What happens in book club ... stays in book club. But ... there have been trips, dinners, parties, choirs and other spin off activities ... and lots, and lots of coffee.
Not really, we are an open lot - we rotate the home where Book Club is held and the host then chooses the book. This gives us a good chance to read genres different to what we might usually choose. Lately, we have been on a kick of books set during/just after World War II. We regularly use the library ordering system for our book choices and it’s almost never failed us!
As we are a group of nine, it's more than one title really:
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
All The Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
The Girl who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson
The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman
We may be too old to change our minds about anything but if you push - The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood would rate in that category.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry, The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan and The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery are fondly remembered (not!) by a quorum of book club members.
The Flight of the Wren by Orla McAlinden, a novel inspired by true events, blending fact and fiction, it explores the impact of the famine on the women of the time.
Our selection is as follows:
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Transatlantic by Colm McCann
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
Would you like to
suggest a reader for next month?
