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VIRTUAL Reading group: Reading for Wellbeing

24 June 2022, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm

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This reading group, started by Sam Rayner, Vice Dean of Wellbeing for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, warmly welcomes any UCL staff who would like to meet and talk about how books – all kinds of books! – can help us with our sense of wellbeing.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

UCL staff

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

A&H Wellbeing

To receive the invites, please send an email to (p.llombart@ucl.ac.uk) or click the button down below:

to receive the invites send an email here

This reading group warmly welcomes any UCL staff member who would like to meet and talk about how books – all kinds of books! – can help us with our sense of wellbeing. What do you go to for comfort? Inspiration? Escape? From cookery books to nature writing, crime fiction to romance novels, no matter what your preferences are, come along and join us! 

 

Our final IAS Reading for Wellbeing group session will be on June 24th, via Teams, 1-2pm, and we’ll welcome Oliver Burkeman, the writer of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. This brilliant book looks at how to deal with overload, and was one of the first recommendations from our very first session back in 2021!  Now Melanie Horstead, from the Dept of History, who made that recommendation, will join Samantha Rayner, A&H’s Vice Dean Wellbeing,  in leading the group discussion and conversation with the author; they will talk about the impact the book has had on them, and encourage the group to share their own highlights and responses.  

To celebrate this final session for the year, we have 12 copies of the book to give away!  Simply email London Review Bookshop Manager, Natalia de la Ossa (ndelaossa@lrb.co.uk), with the subject line UCL Reading Group, including your address in the body of the email, and the first 12 responses she gets will get a copy posted out to them for free!  UK addresses only, please. 

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First term

Reading Group Week 1

22/10/2021

Books Discussed:

  • Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman
  • The Wild Silence, by Raynor Winn
  • Venetia, by Georgette Heyer
  • The Minor Bohemians, by Eimear McBride
  • The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith
  • Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton
  • The Ayurvedic Self-Care Handbook, by Sarah Kucera
  • Dear Reader, by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Plus, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Ian McEwan

Reading Group Week 2

19/11/2021

We welcomed Dr Philippa Holloway, who talked about the 100 Words of Solitude project she and her partner, Dr Simon Holloway, ran during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Some notes on Philippa:

Dr Philippa Holloway is an author and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Staffordshire University. Her prize-winning short fiction/non-fiction is published on four continents and her debut novel, The Half-life of Snails, is due out with Parthian Books in Spring 2022. She is Writer in Residence at Hack Green Nuclear Bunker and member of Liverpool University’s Literature and Science Research Hub. She is the co-curator of 100 Words of Solitude, a global writing project responding to lockdowns, and co-editor of the collection 100 Words of Solitude: Global Voices in Lockdown 2020 (Rare Swan Press).

Reading Group Week 3

17/12/2021

Books Discussed:

  • The Joy of Small Things, by Hannah Jane Parkinson
  • A Poem for Every Winter Day, edited by Allie Esiri
  • Christmas Poems, by U A Fanthorpe
  • Piranesi, by Susannah Clarke
  • These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett
  • The Christmas Train, by David Baldacci
  • Lunch at the Shop, by Peter Miller
  • Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman
  • The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle
  • Atomic Habits, by James Clear
  • At Night All Blood is Black, by David Diop
  • The Kiterunner, by Khalid Hosseini
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khalid Hosseini
  • Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks
  • The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne

Winter Joy

by Carol Blackburn

A Jar full of hope and good cheer, to last throughout the year,

Spreading joy with its messages, wherever it lands,Like the winter sun, as it sets upon the horizon,The crush of snow underfoot, as it leaves its imprint as a clue,With a gracious solitude, when walking each day,Surveying the trees standing tall, in their winter coats,

As they look forward to the coming year.

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Second term

Reading Group Week 1

21/01/2022
 
  • John Grisham, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
  • Marwan Bishara for Al Jazeera - A happier new year takes imagination and courage 2022 may not be all doom and gloom, but that depends on us.
  • Geoff Powter - Strange and Dangerous Dreams
  • Margaret Storey - The Dragon's Sister & Timothy Travels

  • CS Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia

  • Enid Blyton - The Famous Five 

  • Enid Blyton - The Secret Seven

  • Sidney Poitier - Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter

  • Julie Walters - Stories and audiobooks

  • Jane Austen - Pride & Prejudice

  • Grimms' Fairy Tales

 

Reading Group Week 3

18/03/2022

 

  • Ordinary People, Diana Evans
  • Things, Georges Perec
  • Snow, John Banville
  • Reading in the Dark, Seamus Deane
  • The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold
  • The Law and the Lady, Wilkie Collins, as well as other novels by Collins  
  • The Overstory, Richard Powers
  • Various novels by Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine
  • Audiobooks in general
  • One Good Turn and Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson
  • I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
  • Impostor Syndrome, Kathy Wang

Third term

Reading Group Week 1

20/05/2022

List of Reading References:

  • Ivan Head, ‘Potato Sermon’, and ‘A Prior Potato Sermon’. See https://ivanhead.com/blog/
  • Nora Ephron, ‘Who Are You?’ and ‘Dessert Spoons’. In I Remember Nothing, (Black Swan, 2012).
  • Colm Toibin, ‘November in America’ and ‘Pangur’. In Vinegar Hill, (Carcanet, 2022).
  • Philip Larkin, ‘Cut Grass’. In High Windows (Faber, Faber 90, 2019)
  • Susannah Evans, “A Contingency Plan’ and ‘Summer with Robobees’. In Near Future (Nine Arches Press, 2019). Also see https://andotherpoems.com/2018/11/09/three-poems-by-suzannah-evans/ Ted Hughes, ‘Fern’. In Wodwo (Faber, 1967). Or see https://thedailygardener.org/fern/
  • Sandol Stoddard Warburg, I Like You (Souvenir Press, 2021)
  • The Little Book of Humanism (Piatkus, 2020)
  • Emma Smith piece in Why We Read (Penguin, 2022) pp. 132-3. Also mentioned, Emma Smith, Portable Magic (Allen Lane, 2022).

 

All welcome. This is a virtual event. Please note that there may be recording at some events. Please follow this FAQ link for more information. All our events are free but you can support the IAS here.

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