Cross-Genre Reading Group

Welcome to the 'Book Salad'!

This is one of the three, newly launched, Topping & Co. St Andrews book groups. Meeting on the last Tuesday of every month, the 'Book Salad' will explore a range of stories across multiple genres.

This book group is a salad - to make a salad you put together things you'd like to eat that are each different in some way. Instead of reading one kind of book over the months, we can mix our genres. We will read mostly imaginative fiction, with at least one non-fiction title, and perhaps a graphic novel, and there will be writers from different ages and backgrounds. 

This group is hosted by David, who says 'I choose books that feel imaginative and expressive and that jump out at me. I like variety and I think of books as transport to somewhere interesting and different.'

September's book is: No Pain Like This Body by Harold Sonny Ladoo

In the Caribbean, at the beginning of the last century, a poor rice-growing family struggle to exist. Four siblings pass their days in the ricefield, as does Ma. But Pa is an angry man ready to vent. It is the August rainy season and above their heads the black sky crackles with lightning.

On the day that Pa nearly drowns Ma in a tub of washing water, the children and their mother escape into the cane fields to wait out Pa's rage. But eight-year-old Rama, catches a chill in the rain and falls ill. What follows is a tale of the inheritance of loss. It contains a heart-stopping intensity that places it as one of the greatest Caribbean novels ever written.

Reading Group Structure

Ticketing: Each place is £5, which can be redeemed against a copy of a reading group book.

Frequency: Each reading group will meet once a month, on a set day of the week. You do not need to commit to one group, or every meeting! Just book for those you're interested in each month, and we hope to entice you back for another one.