I can’t really say that the four-year book club that was my degree lacked in booze in any way, but I still didn’t get to drink it while having it out on the arithmetic symbolism of Middle English poetry at 9am on a Thursday morning. It seems I’ve already spent an enormous portion of my life talking about books – faffing off all my other subjects in school to reread Romeo and Juliet, studying literature in third-level despite the advice of literally everyone, and finally (see, everyone!?) landing a real-life job marketing books. Still, somehow, I needed more.
Enter Waterstones Tottenham Court Road’s snazzy new events programme, and their Boozy Book Club. That blue wonder you see above is a drinkable and damn tasty version of Kurt Vonnegut’s earth-destroying Ice-Nine, the fictional material that appears in his wicked dystopia, Cat’s Cradle. Pairing great little books with fine alcohol is an obvious yet ever-pleasing combination, and this book club has it down to a tee. Slightly warm white wine supped on a plastic chair while you’re tuning in and out of yet another thank you speech at a book launch just doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
While I love giving out stink/raving in rapture about what I’ve read on Twitter, and most of my friends are book types, there’s something irreplaceable about coming together to collectively rip apart or big up a book a group of familiar faces have undertaken together. When your TBR list is comprised of all the books you never had time for in university; the new books you’re dying to catch up on; your addiction to space-opera comics; and all the incredible stuff our publishers put out, it can be too tempting to breeze through a book without stopping to *reflect*. Somehow, I manage to get a sense of achievement out of nodding and ranting with two glasses of wine for a couple hours a month, and I’m not about to question that.
I was probably always going to end up in a book club when I moved to London, but now I’m a few months into Boozy Book Club I just wanted to take the chance to shout about it and urge you to join one. Here’s a few from our favs and we’d love for you to tweet us some more:
Boozy Book Club meets once a month at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road – we don’t have a theme but we’ve been reading literary fiction so far
Reads is Gosh Comics’ monthly comics club – again there’s no one theme but you probably won’t be assigned any superhero comics anytime soon
See also: Let’s Talk Intersectionality
Big Green Bookshop is our local and they’ve got three different reading groups, including one for short stories, a genre most readers could use a hand reading more of
Post by Heather
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