u/Rise_a_knight

If you like reading or want to get back into reading and want to read books from the Western Canon, you’re invited to join us.

This is a low pressure, companionable reading group for people who want to read with others with no pressure whatsoever.

For a list of suggestions on what books to try, please see the previous post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/1ud5sx7/monthly_chch_western_canon_reading_group_meet_up/

Have you always wanted to just read a book with other readers — not necessarily the same book like a book club, but just to have other people around to give you the incentive to focus? 

Come join us at Café Mint.

There is no obligation to have read a book from the Western canon. 

If you’re keen, just bring a book that counts as western canon (older European, American, Canadian and British works that made an impact on the literary and cultural scene - you decide what counts) and we‘ll do a bit of silent reading and then you’re welcome to stay for a chat or just not chat if that’s your preference.

Currently just limiting it to the western canon because there’s a clear thread of linked ideas so it’s easier to have discussions about the books.

A couple of suggestions if you are not sure where to start:

If you like Bridgerton or romance in general, you might like…

• Jane Austen’s novels: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
• Evelina by Frances Burney

If you like swashbuckling high octane adventures, you might like…

• Alexandre Dumas’ works: The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Black Tulip etc. (He has written a lot) 
• Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (the ancient equivalent of action films)

 

If you like social commentary, you might like… 

• Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo 
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (recently finished it; it’s heartbreaking) 
• Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

If you like thrillers/horror, you might like…

• Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Monk by Matthew Lewis
• A String of Pearls by James Malcolm Rymer and/or Thomas Peckett Prest (this is the basis of Sweeney Todd)
• HP Lovecraft’s stories (he created Cthulhu)
• Edgar Allan Poe’s stories (The Telltale Heart was one of his)
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

 

If you like detective stories, you might like…

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

If you like stories with LGBTQ+ representation, you might like…

• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
• Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
• Ovid’s Metamorphoses

If you like sci-fi/fantasy, you might like…

• HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (they did a BBC miniseries filmed in NZ and yes, I think the show had better dinosaur representation)
• Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea etc. 
• JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion

I am also thinking of starting a Sunday reading group in New Brighton, also meeting once a month, so let me know if that is something you’d be interested in.

Feel free to ask for book suggestions if there’s a particular genre/thing you like and you’d like to get into the western canon equivalent. I can’t promise I’ll have the answer but I can try. 

Have you always wanted to just read a book with other readers? Not a book club, where everyone reads the same book — just a group of people reading their own books, together. Come join us at Café Mint.

There is no obligation to have read a book from the Western canon. If you’re keen, just bring a book that counts (older European, American, Canadian and British works that made an impact on the literary and cultural scene - you decide what counts) and we‘ll do a bit of silent reading and then you’re welcome to stay for a chat or just not chat if that’s your preference.

Currently just limiting it to the western canon because there’s a clear thread of linked ideas so it’s easier to have discussions about the books if people want to have book discussions.

Western canon includes books like:

- Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul

- Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers etc

- James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room

- John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men etc.

- Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird

- Matthew Lewis’ The Monk

- Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

- Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

- Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice etc.

- Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

- Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories

- Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species

- Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey

- Dante’s Divine Comedy

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

- Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

etc. 

There’s a lot of variety in the canon and everyone has a different list of books.

If there is interest for a Sunday one, I am also thinking of starting a Sunday reading group in New Brighton, also meeting once a month, so let me know if that is something you’d be interested in.

And not just with book hoarding/tsundoku. 🥴I’m of the Umberto Eco school of thought about home libraries, though I am in the process of refining the collection.