Staff Book Club

There are two books clubs which are open to Staff Association members to join. One is held in the evening at a venue in Exeter, the other at lunchtimes on the Streatham Campus (if staff from St Luke's, Cornwall or any other site would like to join the lunchtime club via videolink, please get in touch and we will sort the appropriate facilities - contact details below) 

You don't have to finish a book to come along - your opinions are still welcome.

Lunchtime Book Club

The lunchtime club will be meeting on the first Wednesday of every month.

The aim being to have read the books before the meetings so we can discuss and critique! Look out for our guest speaker events as well!

We set up to three meetings in advance so that you do not have to attend every month.  Come and enjoy your lunch with complimentary tea / coffee provided by the staff association. Please get in touch if you wish to attend detailing which meeting/s so we can cater for you at staffassociation@exeter.ac.uk . 

Meetings:

7 November 12.30pm –A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Old Library/Research Commons Seminar A/B

Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us.

Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?

On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.
Register to attend

EVENT!! BOOK CLUB GUEST SPEAKER
5 December 1.00pm – Working Girls, Guest Speaker, Author Maureen Carter
Streatham Court Lecture Theatre C

Fifteen years old…brutalised….dumped in a park ….throat slashed…. Schoolgirl prostitute Michelle Lucas died in agony and terror, utterly alone. The sight breaks the heart of Sergeant Bev Morriss of West Midlands Police. She thought she was hardened, but gazing at Michelle’s pale, broken body she is consumed by a cold fury.She knows this case is different – this is the one that will push her to the edge. Plunging herself into the seedy heart of Birmingham’s vice-land she struggles to infiltrate the deadly jungle of hookers, evil pimps and violent johns. But no one will co-operate, no one will break the wall of silence. Is it fear or guilt? When a second victim dies, Bev knows time is running out. If she is to win the trust of the working girls - she has to take the biggest, most dangerous, gamble of her life … out on the streets.
Find out more about Maureen Carter
Register to attend

9 January 12.30pm – The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce NOMINATED FOR MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Laver Building 825

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012: 'The odyssey of a simple man, original, subtle and touching' - Claire Tomalin
When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else's life. 'Wonderful' - Guardian
Register to attend

6 February 12.30pm – Bring up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel NOMINATED FOR MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Laver Building 825

The Man Booker-shortlisted sequel to the Man Booker-winning Wolf Hall.

‘My boy Thomas, give him a dirty look and he’ll gouge your eye out. Trip him, and he’ll cut off your leg,’ says Walter Cromwell in the year 1500. ‘But if you don’t cut across him he’s a very gentleman. And he’ll stand anyone a drink.’

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith’s son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church. But Henry’s actions have forced England into dangerous isolation, and Anne has failed to do what she promised: bear a son to secure the Tudor line. When Henry visits Wolf Hall, Cromwell watches as Henry falls in love with the silent, plain Jane Seymour. The minister sees what is at stake: not just the king’s pleasure, but the safety of the nation. As he eases a way through the sexual politics of the court, its miasma of gossip, he must negotiate a ‘truth’ that will satisfy Henry and secure his own career. But neither minister nor king will emerge undamaged from the bloody theatre of Anne’s final days.
Register to attend

By setting books ahead, it allows people to attend monthly, bi-monthly or every quarter, as they able.

Books read so far:

Scoop - Evelyn Waugh (January 2012) 

Into the Blue - Robert Goddard (February 2012)

Possession - by A.S.Byatt (March 2012)

Into the Wild - by John Krakauer (April 2012)

Fifty Shades of Grey - E.L.James (October 2012)

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson (November 2012)

For further information and to join the book club please e-mail Kate Hawley at staffassociation@exeter.ac.uk

Evening Book Club

This club meets every six weeks on a Wednesday after work at a venue in Exeter. (5.30pm-7pm ish)

The next set of books are:

30th May 2012, venue tbc - The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

11th July 2012, venue tbc - The Bell by Iris Murdoch

For more information on the evening book club email Amy Boylan at staffbookclub@exeter.ac.uk