Book lovers wanted!

Talking about books you have read or listened to, can be just as enjoyable – even when our views differ. Meeting every two months via zoom or teams, we’d like its members to decide how they’d like to run it.

Does everyone read the same book, or do you want to choose two or three to read? Are the chosen books drawn from a ‘recommendations hat’? How many members should it have? How do we make sure everyone’s voice is heard? How do we make sure everyone can participate? Does it need a chairperson or moderator?

Perhaps you’re already in a club and you have a great idea of how this could work. Perhaps you’re not in a book club and would love to join one! We’d like the focus to be on books that deal with the natural world, the countryside, our environment, but you may have a different idea. Perhaps the group might choose to read long-standing titles such as

• the never out-of-print ‘A Natural History of Selborne’ by Gilbert White, or
• Rachel Carson‘s ‘Silent Spring’ (Hamish Hamilton).

The group might prefer to read more recent titles such as

• ‘English Pastoral: an inheritance’ (Penguin) by James Rebanks, which won the 2021 Wainwright Prize for nature writing, or his earlier book ‘The Shepherd’s Life’, an unsentimental though loving memoir of hill farming in the Lake District.

Or you might like to read something closer to home, such as

• ‘On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging’ (‘Chelsea Green Publishing UK), by Nicola Chester, who lives and works in the North Wessex AONB, and which won the 2021 Richard Jefferies Award for nature writing.

Maybe

• ‘The Nature Fix’ (W. W. Norton Company) by Florence Williams, which asks ‘why does nature make us happier, healthier and more creative?’, catches your eye instead?

If you’d like to take part, please get in touch with Imogen Haig, our Volunteer Book Club Co-ordinator

Here

We’re also seeking book reviewers for our website too. More information on how to get involved is here.