by Library Admin | 30 May 2022 | Cricklereaders Read
This month Cricklereaders will be enjoying Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Here’s an intriguing snippet from the start of the book:
For many years Henry Kitteridge was a pharmacist in the next town over, driving every morning on snowy roads, or rainy roads, or summertime roads, when the wild raspberries shot their new growth in brambles along the last section of town before he turned off to where the wider road led to the pharmacy. Retired now, he still wakes early and remembers how mornings used to be his favorite, as though the world were his secret, tires rumbling softly beneath him and the light emerging through the early fog, the brief sight of the bay off to his right, then the pines …
The June group will meet at the library at 1030 on Sunday 26 June. Do join in.
by Library Admin | 4 Apr 2022 | Cricklereaders, Cricklereaders Read
A highly topical read for the months of April/May. We’ll be reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. Why not read along with us and then join us in the library to discuss?
We’ll meet between 1030 and 1130 in the library on Sunday 15 May.
Spaces still available in our book group. See here for details on joining.
by Library Admin | 24 Feb 2022 | Cricklereaders Read
The April meeting will meet on Sunday 3 April at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is The Forty Rules of Love, by Turkish author Elif Shafak.
Synopsis
“A novel within a novel, The Forty Rules of Love tells two parallel stories (The technique placing two story together is called juxtaposition in literature) that mirror each other across two very different cultures and seven intervening centuries.” It starts when a housewife, Ella, gets a book called Sweet Blasphemy for an appraisal.. This book is about a thirteenth century poet, Rumi, and his spiritual teacher, Shams. The book presents Shams’s Forty Love Rules at different intervals. The story presented in the novel is basically on “love and spirituality that explains what it means to follow your heart”.
The letter “b”
Every chapter of the book starts with letter “b”. It is because the secret of Quran lies in Surah Al-Fatiha and its spirit is contained in the phrase Bismillah ir Rehman ir Rahim (In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent and the most Merciful). The first Arabic letter of the Bismillah has a dot below it that symbolizes the Universe as per Sufism thoughts.
If you’d like to join in, drop us a line to info@cricklewoodlibrary.org.uk, or just read along with us and let us know what you think!
by Library Admin | 10 Jan 2022 | Cricklereaders Read
The February meeting will take place on Sunday at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummings.
Teeming with life and crackling with energy – a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood.
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.
by Library Admin | 26 Nov 2021 | Cricklereaders Read
The January meeting will take place on Sunday 9 January at the library, from 1030-1130. The book for this month is American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummings.
An incendiary novel of desperate love and pulse-quickening danger, American Dirt confronts the lawless frontier of the US-Mexico border in a narrative possessing whip-smart pacing and an ability to make the seemingly incredible both authentic and intimate.
Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, and is married to a fearless journalist. Luca, their eight-year-old son, completes the picture. But it only takes a bullet to rip them apart.
In a city in the grip of a drug cartel, friends become enemies overnight, and Lydia has no choice but to flee with Luca at her side. North for the border… whatever it takes to stay alive. The journey is dangerous – not only for them, but for those they encounter along the way. Who can be trusted? And what sacrifices is Lydia prepared to make.
by Library Admin | 30 Sep 2021 | Cricklereaders, Cricklereaders Read
This month Cricklereaders will be enjoying Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Born in East Africa, Yusuf has few qualms about the journey he is to make. It never occurs to him to ask why he is accompanying Uncle Aziz or why the trip has been organised so suddenly, and he does not think to ask when he will be returning. But the truth is that his ‘uncle’ is a rich and powerful merchant and Yusuf has been pawned to him to pay his father’s debts. Paradise is a rich tapestry of myth, dreams and Biblical and Koranic tradition, the story of a young boy’s coming of age against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.
The November group will meet at the library at 1030 on Sunday 21 November. Do join in.
