To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Sylvia Plath’s modern classic The Bell Jar, we have recruited five reading groups to read, review and blog about the book.
About Hertfordshire Book Group
Meet the Hertfordshire Book Group, an all male reading group that started out as a weekly football club. The men discovered that they shared a passion for reading as well as sport and so the group began.
“It all started on 1st September 2006,” explains Huw, one of the members. "There are seven of us and we meet at each other’s houses in turn and have one meeting per year at a restaurant. Our average age is just below 60 and since we started, four of us have retired. I would say that we all had working class beginnings and all have made the most of our opportunities. We are politically left of centre and still sportingly active, taking part in football, golf, badminton, cycling, athletics and anything else we are tempted by.
“The host of each meeting provides refreshments and selects the next book to read. At our restaurant meeting we vote on a genre and then a book within that genre to read, genres have included: comedy, Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson; sex, In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey; horror, Dracula by Bram Stoker; and science fiction, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. We have read over 60 books of which about 10 were written by women. We have also produced creative writing of our own!”
Top reads
By male authors
1. Germinal by Emile Zola
2. Waiting for the Barbarians by J M Coetzee
3. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
4. Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres
5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
By female authors
1. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
3. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
4. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
Get involved
Read more about the groups participating in the project and how they are getting on.
Are you and your book club reading The Bell Jar this year? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below or email"
