Literaire Studentenvereniging Flanor

Dear Flanorians, today I’m going to talk about my (Rosina) and Nicole’s reading group READ!/LEES!.

Read!’s tagline is ‘for anyone that likes books’. With READ!/LEES! we read any kind of fiction based on a democratic vote.

The only stipulations are that the book has an English translation and it has to be available at the library in Groningen. Check out their collection here. We try to read and discuss a book every two months, so we focus on shorter books. We pick new books after every reprieve/LeePra when we have new members. We pick three books at a time, so everyone has enough time to read the book they’d like. In total (when everything goes well) that means we read six books in a year.

When we discuss books, we talk about elements we found interesting and often how they relate to us. We were finally able to have a physical meeting last week and we plan to have physical meetings in the future! You don’t have to have finished the book to join our meetings. If you don’t mind spoilers, we can recommend the book in the meeting as well.

This year we’ve read and discussed : The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang, Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri and Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng.

In the past we’ve read: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, The Kite Runner by Khaleid Hosseini, London NW by Zadie Smith, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, Real Life by Brandon Taylor, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood, This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mothar and Max Gladstone and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk.

We’re currently reading Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie for our May/June pick and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath for our July/August meeting.

You can suggest any book you want that follows the stipulations, so feel free to suggest different books when we choose new books! Feel free to join our WhatsApp group, you can find the link here.