This month we have been reading Eat Up! the radical manifesto on food, appetite and eating what you want by Ruby Tandoh. We loved it. Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club
Leiden Book Club Book 2 – Motherhood
Our second Leiden book club read for 2019 was Motherhood by Shelia Heti an experimental and vital read for anyone contemplating motherhood Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club Book 1 – My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Our first book for 2019 is ‘My Year of Rest and Releaxation’ by Otessa Moshfegh. Read what Jenna though in our My Year of Rest and Releaxtion review Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club 2019
Leiden Book Club is for anyone and everyone. Each month we will read a fab book and then we will talk about how fab (or not) it is. Join us in 2019 Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club: Book & Film 8 – Bridge to Terabithia
Leiden’s book club leader for 2018 Jesse Petrie discusses Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, a beautiful story about loss. Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club: Book & Film 7 – Emma and Clueless
Jane Austen is famously quoted as saying of Emma ‘I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like’. And it appears that prediction holds true in 2018, at least for the book-clubbers of Leiden Magazine. With the exception of this reviewer that is. My fellow bibliophiles, all of them twenty-somethings, wrinkled their collective noses in distaste of Emma Woodhouse’s character, citing words like immature (Emma is not yet one and twenty); mean, selfish and snobbish. Myself, of a worldlier age and having fallen for Emma in my mid-30s, find her witty, charming, interesting… Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club: Book & Film 6 – Cloud Atlas
Since its initial publication in 2004, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas has garnered no small amount of acclaim. Its structure has been praised as ‘fantastic and complex’, its myriad voices have been called ‘distinct and superb’; it has won various awards, sold over one million copies and has been adapted into major motion picture. It is an opus cherished the world over — and I fucking hate it. The novel begins, simply enough, on a beach in the Pacific Ocean. It is here that we are introduced to the first of many protagonists: a young notary from mid 18th century… Continue Reading
Leiden Book Club Book & Film 5 – The Harp in the South
I feel as though I begin every review I write by claiming scepticism upon the receiving the initial assignment. Maybe I’m pompous, maybe I’m just careful, but almost everything I have thrown into my lap is met with reluctance. This reaction was no different upon purchasing Book Club’s latest: The Harp in the South by Ruth Park. The Harp in the South, first published in 1948, is a gritty exploration of life in Sydney’s then-slum Surry Hills, set during the Great Depression for added appeal. The novel focuses most of its attention on the struggles of the Darcy family… Continue Reading