"Only one hour in the normal day is more pleasurable than the hour spent in bed with a book before going to sleep and that is the hour spent in bed with a book after being called in the morning !"

Rose Macaulay

This quote was one of the ideas that started the Halstead Reading Group in June 2004 and now we meet monthly from 9.30 a.m. - 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in one anothers homes and over a cup of coffee (and maybe a biscuit!)

There are 16 members and we've read and discussed over 50 books in the past 5 years!  Jane Austen, Dan Brown, Khaled Hosseini, Charles Dickens and Kate Moss are just some of the authors we've got to know and enjoy.  We've held 3 guest events with local authors, travelled to Carcassonne and Granada to find out what inspired Kate Moss and Victoria Hislop to set their books in these wonderful places and now have a literary lunch outing at Christmas !

Books we have agreed to read over the next few months include :

• "The Road Home" by Rose Tremaine,
• "Earthly Joys" by Philippa Gregory,
• "War & Peace" by Tolstoy (going to be a challenge!)

If you'd like to join a Reading Group, we would be very happy to help set up another group perhaps at a different time of day or different day of the week so just give me a call. Jean Peel 01959 533180.