09.01.2018 - ‘Every Third Thought’, Robert McCrum, (Picador, 2017): On Life, Death and the Endgame The question is no longer ‘Who am I?’ but ‘How long have I got?’ In 1995, at the age of 42, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic...
13.12.2017 - ‘The Underground Railroad’ (2016) by Colson Whitehead Alex, Georg, Sandra and Andrew discuss and read from an extraordinary novel. ‘The Underground Railroad’ is about a slave named Cora who grows up on a Georgia plantation....
09.11.2017 - ‘Hag-Seed’, by Margaret Atwood (2016) Brigitte, Maria, Sandra, Sonja and Andrew discuss: the cover-picture of the book, the origin of the title, with extracts from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. The novel a clever...
07.08.2017 - „A woman arrives in Athens in the height of summer to teach a writing course. Once there, she becomes the audience to a chain of narratives as the people she meets tell her one after another the stories of their lives. Beginning with the...
05.07.2017 - ‘The Noise of Time’ (2016), Julian Barnes a ‘fictional biography’ of Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet composer In May 1937 a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad appartment block. He waits all through the night,...
07.06.2017 - A detailed portrait of a marriage, family ties and the community of Crosby, Maine. A penetrating, vibrant exploration of the human soul, with all the joys and grief of a painful journey of love. What sort of town is Crosby? Why is the book called...
11.05.2017 - We review how the Reading Circle started in Sept 2012 and its aims: to share personal reading experiences; to explore different readings, impressions and insights; to enjoy social company and interaction. How do sessions run? Which books, and how...
19.04.2017 - Once upon … one day in a life: March 30, 1924. Jane Goodchild, 22, an orphan, a maid in a country mansion, has no mother to visit on ‘Mothering Sunday’. Her relationship with Paul, of upper-middle class, changes dramatically that...
01.03.2017 - „The compelling, inspiring and comically sublime story of one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of Apartheid and the tumultuouis days of freedom that followed.” Questions discussed by Angie, Maria, Sandra, Sonja and...
30.01.2017 - ‘Serious Sweet’, by A. L. Kennedy (2016) Five of us (Maria, Lee Anne, Sandra, Alex and Andrew) discuss A.L. Kennedy’s latest book, the novel ‘Serious Sweet’ , long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2016. A good man in a...
10.01.2017 - Alan Bennett: ‘The Lady in the Van’ Five of us (Sylvia, Sandra, Heinz, Tom and Andrew) discuss the book by Alan Bennett: about the eccentric, stubborn and demanding woman who lived in a van for 15 years in the drive of the writer in...
14.12.2016 - The first book for discussion is ‘Light Years’ by the American author James Salter, a novel about lost lives and the elusiveness of happiness.
28.11.2016 - With the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and the current production of ‘Der Sturm‘ at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck, the Reading Circle decided to read Shakespeare’s last play, ‘The Tempest’, from...
