What we’re about
Caversham Critics is a Reading-based book club. We are a friendly, welcoming group of people who love reading and talking about books. We read a real variety of books; from 18th Century classics to modern bestsellers, Booker prize winners and everything between. Our only criteria is that it should be good and should provoke discussion. In the last year we have read titles including the following:
Melmoth- Sarah Perry
The Handmaids Tale- Margaret Atwood
Circe- Madeline Millar
The Fishermen- Chigozie Obioma
Under the Skin- Michael Faber
Convenience Store Woman- Sayaka Murata
Ghost Wall- Sarah Moss
3 Women- Lisa Taddeo
The Binding- Bridget Collins
We welcome all readers, and actively encourage people of all races, beliefs and sexuality to take part.
We meet every month, on the first Monday. The conversation is quite informal and we go around the group discussing the reasons we liked, or disliked the book and talking about any themes and topics it raised. We sometimes agree, often disagree and the conversation is always interesting.
After the discussion we pick the next book to read (for 2 months time). Everyone is free to suggest a title, (or titles) and give an outline of the book and why they are suggesting it. The group votes and the winning book becomes the next choice. Using this method means we not only get a variety of titles on our reading list, but it's also a truly democratic process. If a book doesn't get picked, it can be suggested again; some of our recent great reads have won after a couple of months of just missing out in the vote.
We tend to pick 'non-genre' books. There is a science fiction splinter group which caters for this, who meet every 6 weeks, you will see their meetups and details on our page as well.
We do have a set of rules/guidelines that we ask people to follow. We ask people to bear these in mind when suggesting a book to make the group an inclusive, accessible and fun group to be part of.
Rules:
-Books should be less than 400 pages. Slightly over is OK, but this length means people have the time to read it. (The Sci Fi group has a longer limit of 500 as it meets every 6 weeks.)
-Books should not be part of a series/volume. This means readers don't miss out on part of the story.
-Books should be available in paperback and easily sourced from the usual book shops and websites.
-Books that contain writing with certain themes that may put off, or even trigger people should be flagged well in advance. This is important as content such as violence, abuse or other emotive subjects can be distressing to read. With this in mind, please make sure that if you suggest a book which may be distressing to some readers, please mention when you make your suggestion in the meeting. The onus is on the person making the suggestion to either have read or to have done some research into the book before suggesting it. There are resources such as https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PHlA7QglPpKRbOVEKc_0BCjRmZ8PWPLr3t_wMnggsAg/edit#gid=214254319 which may help this. Publishers sometimes include trigger warning information as a link on their websites or as a QR code inside the front or back cover of the book.
This last rule is important as we want to be mindful of suggesting people read content that may affect them adversely.
To cover the costs of being hosted by the meetup website we charge a small fee of £1 per meeting attended- you can choose how to pay based on what suits you and how many times you plan to attend. There is no cost for your first meetup, so do come and try us for free!
