The Reading Group: Coventry and Leamington

In 1981 the Workers’ Educational Association ran a course in Leamington Spa entitled “Women in the Victorian Novel”. It was a lively, thought-provoking course which had a whole collection of people meeting after the session to have a drink and talk over what we had been discussing.

When the course ended many of us enrolled for “Women in Film” which was the next in the series. That finished and there were no more to follow  so we decided to create our own group, meet in one another’s homes and choose books that we would like to talk about. We had no models to follow; reading groups were a not known phenomenon so we invented a few informal rules: the book would be introduced by someone each session so that we had a focus for our thinking and we would try to balance fiction with biography and poetry.

Some 23 years later we are still meeting with much pleasure. We have some of the original members still, one of whom has only missed two meetings in the time. The early group had a few men but it was felt that though small in number they were dominating the choice and the discussion and so the Women’s Reading Group came into being. Some members have left the area to follow careers or families; one member died leaving us bereft for a very long time afterwards. New people have joined as they have been introduced by existing members and a dynamic group continues.

At present we have one homeopathy student, two education consultants, two university lecturers, one statistician, one member from France and one from California who bring a different cultural perspective. The others are in various stages of early retirement, doing whatever jobs and travel seem interesting at the time! In all we have had some thirty members. Our oldest honorary member is the 94 year old blind mother of one of the group who joins from time to time for stimulation when she has been able to get the book on tape.

We had Michelle Roberts come to talk to us about “The Visitation”. Jim Crace attended a meeting to talk us through the process of writing “The Gift of Stones”. Carolyn Steedman talked to us about “The Tidy House” as it was published. Jan Beer talked about the works and life of Edith Wharton. In our other meetings one member of the group volunteers, or is persuaded, to give a brief introduction and set some themes for the discussion which follows over a bottle of wine in various sitting rooms and studies in the Coventry and Leamington area.

We have two parties a year, one at New Year and one in the summer. At these we choose the books for the next six months and have some kind of event to connect with the literariness! At one we brought a bunch of flowers that connected with a book title and the house filled with the scent. At another we invented a new version of Room 101 where we all decided what we would most want to keep for ever and what we wished never to see again.  One summer we all dressed as Virginia Woolf, ate and drank, photographed each other and then read out our favourite extracts by her; on another occasion we wore hats that were the titles of books - The Golden Bowl was easy to recognise!  When we discussed Atwood’s "The Edible Woman" we made just such an edible woman out of a richly decorated cake, talked about her then ate her.  We brought three books to mention that had affected our lives profoundly; we cited characters in books that we wanted to be like; and we shared books from our childhood that were important to our lives. All this plus fine wine and delicious “pot-luck” food.

We have read some 218 books as a group and have maintained the poetry, fiction and biography intent. This has widened and sustained our reading as well as giving us hours of pleasure. A list of our reading over the years is an eclectic and impressive collection.