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Riverside Booklist for 2023

We meet at West acre Theatre the first Wednesday of the month. 7.00-9.00 PM.

Cost £26 a year payable to West acre Theatre.

Fees are paid in January of each year.

Interested to Join: Contact Lynette at [email protected]

Upcoming books:


4th January – This month we discuss the books we have read over the Christmas period and books from the book swop.


1 February – Marriage Portrait by Maggie o’ Farrell. The author brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.


1 March – Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig. An original memoir prompted by the author’s daily journey by bus from East Dulwich to the BBC.


5 April – This isn’t the sort of thing that happens to someone like you. By Jon McGregor. A collection of short stories. Set in the flat and threatened fenland landscape, where the sky is dominant and the sea lurks just beyond the horizon, these delicate, dangerous, and sometimes deeply funny stories tell of things buried and unearthed, of familiar places made strange, and of lives where much is hidden, much is at risk, and tender moments are hard-won.


3 May – The Island of Missing Trees By Elif Shafik. A rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal.


7 July – The Offing by Benjamin Myers. Set during a blazing summer in the wake of the Second World War. The book recounts a tender story of love and friendship between a teenage miner and an eccentric older woman.


2 August – Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce. A charming, irresistible debut novel set in London during World War II about an adventurous young woman who becomes a secret advice columnist—a warm, funny, and enormously moving story.


6 September – This month choose from two books you can read or both if you so wish. The dictionary of lost words by Pip Williams. Set in the heyday of the Suffrage movement, this quietly gripping tale of a lexicographer’s daughter who starts compiling her own dictionary out of words deemed ‘less important’ is a poignant exploration of love, tenacity and the ownership of language.

Or
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. Single mother Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist in a man’s world—1960s America—as she becomes an unlikely cooking-show host and the role model her daughter deserves.


4 October – The pull of the Star by Emma Donoghue. An absorbing book, at times painful reading, set in the midst of the 1918 flu epidemic in Dublin.


1 November – Choose either one of the following books to read. The Colour of Milk by Nell Layshorn. 1831 and fifteen-year-old Mary begins the difficult task of telling her story. A scrap of a thing with a sharp tongue and hair the colour of milk, Mary leads a harsh life working on her father’s farm alongside her three sisters. In the summer she is sent to work for the local vicar’s invalid wife…..

Or

Pompeii by Robert Harris. Through the eyes of four characters – a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist – Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction


6 December – Homegoing by Yao Gyasi. A novel of breath-taking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations.

Annual Book swop. Any book you have read during the year and would like to share. Wrap it up and we will share it at the meeting. You will get the book back in January 2024.

Christmas Meal.

Other books on the list the readers recommended:

  • Great Circle. By Maggie Shipstead

  • Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel. By Daphne Du Maurier

  • Perfect. By Rachel Joyce.

  • The Dearly Beloved. By Carla Wall

  • Take what you can Carry. by Gian Sardar.

  • Bibliomaniac. By Robin Ince

  • Matrix by Lauren Goff

  • Longbourn by Jo Baker

  • The book of Goose. By Yiyun Li

  • Demon Copperfield. By Barbara Kingsolver

  • Shrines of Gaiety. By Kate Atkinson


For more information please contact Lynette Brinsdon at [email protected] or on 07900 570765.

Riversiders