World Book Day 2013

Today, March 7th 2013 is World Book Day, which is an initiative to get kids reading. Kids in participating schools will get free book tokens. What better way to get kids reading than free stuff 🙂

Giraffes Can’t Dance – one of the 2013 World Book Day books

We in Around Quarter Past Bookclub and our (count them slowly 2+2+2+2+2+2+3++1+1+4 =21) twenty one children (how did that happen!) love to read and we often recommend books to one another that our little ones have loved. Our kids range in age from 9 year old Nathan to brand new Emmet who came to our last meeting at 12 weeks old so there’s a wide variety in the recommended books.

Check out our previous blogposts here about what books our kiddies love:

Our Children’s Favourite Books

Our Children’s Favourite Books Part 2

And some other links that might be of interest to children’s book lovers:

Review of Peppa’s Big Train

The Gruffalo Official Website

Happy World Book Day

September’s book club meeting

September’s meeting was a roaring success with a grand turnout of eight out of nine of us! Welcome to new member Sarah. We celebrated  the book club’s second birthday with tea, coffee, delicious home made iced banana mini-muffins from Merle, and rather large ‘bite-sized’ brownies. Unfortunately we forgot to take photos. I made everyone fill out questionnaires and have lots of ammunition now for the ‘Who-we-are’ section of the blog. Watch this space.

Sinéad had a total of four books on her shortlist for November’s book choice, and she/we chose ‘Solace’ by Belinda McKeon which she has been enthusing about for quite a while. Gorey library are looking into sourcing some copies for us so please let me know if you need a copy.

For October’s meeting we will be discussing ‘Boxer Beetle’. As we will be starting to think of what books to buy our little ones for Christmas, we are each going to bring along a few of our children’s favourite books so we can talk about them and recommend to each other. 

October’s meeting is the 4th Tuesday of October, the 23rd, as opposed to the _last_ Tuesday of the month as I know at least two of us who are away the last week of the month. It still leaves 4 weeks to read Boxer Beetle. Looking forward to getting stuck in.

Happy reading!

Book events Autumn/Winter 2012

Some book events coming up:

John Banville visits Gorey Library

Author John Banville will visit Gorey Library on Wednesday 26th September at 7.30pm. The world renowned Wexford born writer published his 15th novel this year. This is an opportunity not to be missed. This event is Free. Booking is essential.
To book your place contact Gorey Library: 053 9421481 email: goreylib@wexfordcoc.ie

More info on Gorey Library facebook page

Red Line Book Festival

South Dublin Libraries are delighted to announce that the inaugural Red Line Book Festival will be taking place from November 13th – November 17th 2012. The programme is filling up rapidly. See the authors page for confirmed speakers. Booking is now open for many of the events.

Around Quarter Past’s 2nd Birthday – September 2012

Around Quarter Past started in September 2010, who would have thought we’d be still going two years later.

We have read 27 books in that time!

• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
• Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
• We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
• Trespass by Rose Tremain
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• You’re Next by Gregg Hurwitz
• The Confession of Katherine Howard by Suzannah Dunn
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
• On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
• My Fat Brother by Jim Keeble
• The Radleys by Matt Haig
• When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
• Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich
• Watermelon by Marian Keyes
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• Book Swap – The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright, The day of the Triffids by John Wyndham, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey, The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Touching Earth by Rani Manicka
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

So any ideas to mark the occasion of our second birthday? All ideas welcome. I’m happy to host if its not something we can do in our usual meeting place.

Bord Gáis Book Club of the month

We will be featured on the Bord Gáis Energy Book club website as April’s book club of the month!