Feel Better with a Book
From Lois Walters and Rosie Trustram, Get Into Reading London Project Workers
On starting our new project with Southwark Libraries we were excitingly informed that they had the budget to purchase a set of books to complement the Get Into Reading groups we were setting up in the libraries. What a wonderful task was afore us- choosing books for the collection that tried to do something similar to what a GIR group does. These are books that we feel people will connect to, books that somehow touch us as humans, books that can tell us something about others or about ourselves.
We chose short story collections and poetry anthologies that contained material we knew worked well in groups and that will have a similar impact on readers whether they take the books out of the library to read alone, whether they read them to someone else at home, or whether they then come along to a Feel Better With A Book group in Southwark. They are in 6 Southwark Libraries: Peckham, Camberwell, Canada Water, Newington, John Havard and Dulwich – grab them while you can!
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5 thoughts on “Feel Better with a Book”
I’d really like to know what the titles are please!
Hi Jane
the titles should include:
Short story collections:
A Little Aloud (both the one for adults and the one for children)
Tobias Wolff – Our Story Begins
Tim Gatreaux – Waiting for the Evening News
Mauppassant – A Parisian Affair and Other Stories
Anton Checkov – The Essential Tales
Joanne Harris – Jigs and Reels
James Baldwin – Going To Meet The Man
Doris Lessing – To Room Nineteen, Collected Stories
Roald Dahl – The Collected Short Stories
Bernard Malamud – The Magic Barrel
John Steinbeck – The Short Novels
Raymond Carver – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
David Constantine – Under the Dam and other stories, Comma Press, 2008
Katherine Mansfield – The Collected Short Stories
R K Narayan – Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories
William Trevor – Cheating at Canasta
Haruki Murakami – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Collected Stories
Alice Walker – The Complete Stories
Poetry Collections:
Being Alive
Staying Alive
Being Human
Soul Food
The World Record (all the above are Bloodaxe)
The Nation’s Favourite Poems (and maybe the Nation’s Favourite Comic Poems, Twentieth Century Poems, Poems of Childhood, Poems of Journeys, Poems of Remembrance etc)
Poem for the Day (1 and 2)
Roald Dahl – Revolting Rhymes
Roald Dahl -Songs and Verse
Michael Rosen – Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy (Bloomsbury Paperbacks)
though have not yet had chance to check that all titles are in all libraries. Lots to get stuck into there!
It’s lovely having the collection alongside our groups – group members have started taking them out and I’ve seen library staff using them for their own groups too… I also love having our own ‘Feel Better’ stickers, I might have to start sticking them on my own favourite books!
[…] Libraries, running Feel Better With A Book groups in Southwark and offering a collection of Feel Better books on loan in Peckham, Camberwell, Canada Water, Newington, John Havard and Dulwich L…. Pick up a book and feel […]
[…] Canada Water Libraries, and 6 libraries in Southwark are home to our specially selected range of Feel Better books. Why not pick up one while you’re in your local library? For more information about the […]