The cinema was packed for our visit from Victoria Hislop last week and we were held rapt by the tales of her beloved Greece - and Woodbridge. She shared her newfound passion for archaeology and her activism, and delighted us with her experience of Dancing with the Stars, the Greek version of Strictly Come Dancing. She showed us her own Cycladic figure and there was a short slide show too!
I received lots of lovely comments about the event afterwards and a common request has been to share the names of the authors Victoria recommended on stage. She mentioned Elisabeth Strout and Ann Tyler as novelists she has particularly enjoyed reading.
We all love getting a recommendation from a trusted source, don't we?! That's why our annual book group recommendations evening is such a popular occasion.
There are always surprises - books we've never heard of, perhaps. Other titles might be more familiar and we'll be encouraged to give them a try, and some we've read already and enjoy all over again through hearing someone else's comments.
We're meeting tomorrow evening. It will be well attended as we're combining our discussion of this month's title 'Saltwater' by Jessica Andrews with a few festive nibbles while also sharing our reading recommendations from the past year.
If you haven't let me know and would like to come along, you'll be very welcome but please do reply by noon tomorrow so that I can have everything in place. And if you can't be there, I'll be putting together a list of the recommended titles on my website and will let you have the link in next week's newsletter.
Thank you for reading.