We would love to push people a little to read, but we also want to make sure that people will be interested in what we read. We'd like to have a spread of genres across the year, and also read diversely with books by authors from other countries, including books that may have been translated.

A few notes on genres as bookshops and publishing conventions aren't always the same!

* General fiction is a catch all term for anything that doesn't tend to fit in one of the other genres (or is being deliberately marketed as "general" to gain a wider audience) In most bookshops, general, literary, and women's are often sold together under "fiction", with only "genre" fiction (SFFH, romance, thriller etc) are separated out.

** Speculative fiction tends to be the more "literary" leaning side of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, marketed as "speculative" because that means it can sell better/gains a wider audience. Recent examples include PIRANESI (Susanna Clark)

We will be meeting on Zoom for the rest of 2021, as not everyone is comfortable in person yet

We have two ideas for how the book group could work

1) Everyone reads the same book. This will be a widely published paperback book from a traditional publisher, so it can easily be found. It will be no longer than about 400 pages (don't worry, we won't pick WAR AND PEACE!)

2) Everyone picks their own book that comes under a theme for the month. E.G. "Mythology retellings", "A book in translation", "A wintry read"

The first session we'll all be reading PIRANESI (Susanna Clarke, winner of the women's prize for fiction 2021) because, if we do decide to go with option 2, there won't be much time to all select a book and read this first month!

We'll be in touch with the first meeting time (and zoom link) and the book soon!