READING MATTERS

Can you believe that Essex has the highest number of reading groups in the land? More than 450 of them. Our local reading group is still going strongly as we exit our first decade. Audrey Tampkins was our first leader of the Billericay group in 2000 and some of our very first enthusiasts still come along on the first Tuesday in the month. Our current organiser is the lovely Eileen Meyer who arranges for copies of the books we have chosen to read to arrive at the local library. Of the 120-odd books on our past reading list during the last ten years, many have been classics, crime, chick lit, in fact we give them all a chance. Last month we studied Somerset Maugham's The Moon & Sixpence written in 1919 and currently we are reading Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence published around the same time. The authors chosen since 2000 range from Charles Dickens. Oscar Wilde to Margery Allingham, P D James to Hilary Mantel, Stephen King and Stephen Fry (his biography) - now that one should be interesting. Reading really does matter to our fifteen keen members.