Red Deer Readers

Statement from the Red Deer Readers

We are surprised and delighted to have been shortlisted for the Penguin/Orange Readers Group Prize, 2005.  Red Deer Readers have eight years shared experience of reading together and we welcome this opportunity to share what we do with a wider audience. You can find out more about us on our website www.reddeerreaders.co.uk

Red Deer Readers have been meeting once a month for eight years.  There are twenty-four people on our mailing list of which twelve to fifteen attend the meetings.  We currently have ten men and fourteen women, aged from 25 to 79 years of age. Some of us work in teaching, medicine (nurses, a Consultant, radiographers,) health advice and health promotion, University administration, IT, arts marketing, local government, and accountancy. One member is retired and some work part-time and look after their children.

Name: Red Deer Readers

Where from: Sheffield

Size of group (men/women): 25 – 10 men, 15 women

How long you’ve been meeting: 8 years

Where you meet: The Red Deer (Pub)

What your reading group means to you:
The reading group is the high point of the month. Both socially and intellectually it provides variety and entertainment, provoking thoughtful consideration and passionate debate. The opportunity to discuss books in a friendly, but challenging atmosphere is unique and always produces unexpected insights and pleasures.

What makes your reading group special:
Red Deer exists because people enjoy reading, want to heat what other people think about books, and want to share their opinions with others. Members are aged from their early twenties to almost eighty and everyone has an equal say in what we do and how we run.

Over the last eight years we have developed a way of operating that is inclusive and is founded on the belief that everyone’s view is valid and interesting. Each – person tells the group what they thought o f the novel, speaking without interruption. When every one has had the opportunity to listen to each other’s opinion and compare it to our own experience as readers of the same text. A widely shared view is that membership of the group provides us all with the motivation to read books that we would not otherwise choose. Being able to read a book at the same time as a group of people who will discuss it with you is a pleasure even or perhaps particularly, when a book is not one you enjoy and would otherwise not complete.

We have taken a number of trips away (Scarborough, Whitby, Eyam), developing the group’s social side, which is always in evidence at the meetings, especially as many of us stay on in the pub after our discussions.

The Red Deer Readers has also produced a website www.reddeerreaders.co.uk that has attracted many new members adding fresh insights to the group and providing members and others with access to information about the group and the books we read. Interest in the group has multiplied and we have supported others to establish their own groups, and provide them with space on our website to publicise their activities.

Recently we have given interviews to a number of newspapers and radio stations and
have participated in the BBC1 ‘Page Turner’ programme where we discussed Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel When We Were Strangers with host Jeremy Vine and celebrity guests Ulrika Jonsson and Doon Mackichan, As a result we were invited to appear on BBC Radio Sheffield to hold a live, on-air reading group.

Although we have diversified our activities over the years and the membership has changed as people have come and gone (about half a dozen of us have been members from the beginning), our common interest in reading and discussing books has remained central. The group is as vital and fascinating as it was when we first began.