r/Chchmeet

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.