South Manchester Book Group

We're a friendly and open reading group, and we share a love of books and discussing them with other people. We meet every fortnight, but you don't have to come to them all. It's dead simple; choose a book you like the sound of, read it (or even part of it) beforehand and turn up with a few ideas and money for beer / wine / flirtinis. It's very informal, and we're quite a friendly bunch. We meet at a pub in Didsbury around 8 pm, and can usually be found on the table with the books and flirtinis.

We've become rather popular recently so unfortunately aren't accepting new members just at the moment. But please drop us a line on the Contact Us form and we'll add you to our mailing list.

Our reading list, past, present, and future, appears here and a short version of what we’re reading next is here.

About Us

We're a friendly group of people who share a love of books and enjoy discussing them.

New members are extremely welcome. Just turn up at one of our meetings — you'll find us huddled over books and pints / flirtinis.

We meet every other Thursday to taste the sweets of lit’rature — and wine but there's no pressure to read every book.

A typical meeting

We overwhelmingly read fiction, but have on occasion read non-fiction.

The reading of non-fiction

 We choose books every few months by consensus or flouncing out.

The choosing of books
 
We're probably Didsbury's oldest book group — we first met towards the end of 2005. We're certainly the best.

The ‘organizing’ ‘committee’


Our first recorded book was The Signalman which we read in December 2005, but the group's origins are earlier than that and mist-shrouded.

In early 2005 posters went up around Didsbury and South Manchester advertising a new book group. At the first meeting though everybody was a lal surprized when the posterer didn't turn up. The meeting was held and people carried on meeting for a few months, but the group fizzled out sometime between February 2005 and September 2005, probably due to a lack of flirtinis.

The posterer never returned. This was the old Withington Book Group of late infamy.


The old Withington Book Group of late infamy

A few months later two of the people who'd been to the old group decided to set up a new group and the Didsbury and South Manchester Book Group was born to the acclaim of a grateful country.

The acclaim of a grateful country

If you're the Phantom Posterer please do come along to one of the meetings — we'd love to hear from you. Have you set up other book groups — or caused other book groups to come into existence ?  We'd love to know.  Anyway — we're very grateful.

The phantom posterer