Reading for Wellbeing Virtual Book Group – September

Hello all,

Last night the Book Group met to discuss Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. Several of us found it perhaps a bit hard to connect with at first, as it does move around in time and between the perspectives of several different characters. However, by the end we were blown away by the complex characters, the beautifully multi-layered writing, and the twists and turns of the plot. The emotions were so rich and real that even after we put the book down we still felt like we were carrying the story around with us. It was easy to see why the book has been nominated for so many awards, including winning the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 and the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2021.

The next meeting of the Reading for Wellbeing Virtual Book Group is taking place on Wednesday 6^th October at 7-8pm via WebEx.

This month we will be back to the Quick Reads collection with one of the new 2021 releases – ‘The Baby is Mine’ by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

We own 2 copies of this book at York and 2 at Scarborough – please get in touch if you would like one put to one side for you. If you’d like to buy your own copy, it can be purchased as an e-book from Amazon or the Kobo store or as a paperback from Waterstones, WHSmith, Blackwell’s, Hive or Bookshop.org.

Further, if you’d like to get a head start on ordering some of the full-length titles we have in the mix for the coming months, here are some of the choices so far:

• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (we also have library copies)
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman  (we also have library copies)
• Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
• The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
• The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (I’ve just snuck this one in as I bought it from a charity shop but haven’t got round to it yet J)

If you’ve got books sat on your shelf that you’d like to read, please do email me and I will add them to the list!

If you have any further questions about the Virtual Book Group, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes,

Kathryn Aylward, Assistant Librarian, Trust Library Service