About Us

The book club is called ‘Around Quarter Past’ as we meet at 8pm but its usually around a quarter past eight before everyone arrives. The book club was set up in September 2010 by a group of friends and friends of friends. They have read a book each month since then. It is based in Gorey, Co. Wexford and the meetings are the first Tuesday of every month in a local hotel.

There are 9 members in the book club. They discuss one book a month, and choose each book two months ahead to give everyone time to locate a copy of the book and read it before the meeting. There is no set method for choosing books. Usually one or two members will have ideas, and based on their description of what they have read about a particular book, there will be a vote for which one to do next. If more than one book seems interesting, it is kept in mind for the following month.

The current read at the time of writing this, is ‘Sex on the Moon’ by Ben Mezrich, which is based on a true story, but most of the other books chosen have been fiction. Past favourites have been ‘ A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini which was the first book read by the book club, ‘Room’ by Emma Donoghue and ‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett. The book club try to read as varied a selection as possible and any genre of book is considered. All the members are avid readers normally so they find it interesting to be reading the same book so they can all discuss it after and see it from different perspectives. As everyone suggests books, each member reads some novels they would never normally pick themselves and this makes for lively discussions.

The meetings are very relaxed, there is usually tea and biscuits and they discuss the book and then pick the next one. If there is reading group material available, they go through the discussion points.