We are the Keswick Small Book Club. We like to read small i.e. short books, and we keep our numbers small (9 -enough for lively discussion, even with absences, not so many that voices aren’t heard).

We choose books from the Library’s book group collection. Sometimes we get surprised by something amazingly good: just two examples are “A Month in the Country”, by J.L. Carr, a gentle and humane story about an artist who survived the trenches; and 100 years later, “The Optician of Lampedus”, by Emma-Jane Kirby, the true story of an ordinary group of friends on a boating trip coping, after saving dozens of drowning migrants, with the trauma of guilt at not saving the hundreds of others who drowned.

Even with books we decide are not so good, what we always get is an hour or so each month of lively, amiable, discussion. We meet in the Youth Hostel cafe, so there's no admin required, apart from Jayne’s tireless work ordering, collecting and returning the books.