Orbital — Samantha Harvey

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part — or protective — of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth ? What is earth without humanity ?

This week's book is Orbital by Samantha Harvey and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Dream Count — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America — but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

This week's book is Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Call Me By Your Name — André Aciman

Elio — 17 years old, precocious, the son of an academic — finds himself falling for the older Oliver, a postdoctoral scholar completing his manuscript on Heraclitus at the beautiful home of Elio’s family. Oliver is worldly, handsome, a seductive contrast to Elio’s own naivety. Both are bright and questioning; the hook of desire is soon caught fast.

This week's book is Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

To The Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf

“What is the meaning of life ? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

This week's book is To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average ‘reality’ perceived by the communal eye.”

This week's book is Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Bone People — Keri Hulme

“A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.”

This week's book is The Bone People by Keri Hulme and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Giovanni's Room — James Baldwin

“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.”

This week's book is Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Karla’s Choice — Nick Harkaway

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West's spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only on a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumour in Whitehall – unconfirmed and a little scandalous – that George Smiley might almost be happy. But Control has other plans.

A Russian agent has defected in the most unusual of circumstances, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Susanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But in his absence the shadows of Moscow have lengthened.

Smiley will soon find himself entangled in a perilous mystery that will define the battles to come, and strike at the heart of his greatest enemy.

Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carré.

This week's book is Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Mr Loverman — Bernadine Evaristo

Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather — but he is also secretly lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris.

His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away ?

This week's book is Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

This week's book will not in fact be Mr Loverman but The Madwomen's Ball which we were going to read on 17.04.25, and to which date other parts of this site cleave to, but are in fact going to read now.

The Wall — John Lanchester

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall-an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness, and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding Captain and Sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders whether it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life.

This week's book is The Wall by John Lanchester and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Piranesi — Susanna Clarke

In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall.

This week's book is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

The Mad Woman’s Ball — Victoria Mas

The Salpêtrière asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated — for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women's Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.

This week's book is The Mad Woman’s Ball by Victoria Mas and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

This week's book will not in fact be The Madwomen's Ball but in fact Mr Loverman which we were going to read on 29.05.25, and to which date other parts of this site cleave to, but are in fact going to read now.

The Three Body Problem — Liu Cixin

It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.

This week's book is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Intermezzo — Sally Rooney

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty—two—year—old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude — a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

This week's book is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Judgment on Deltchev — Eric Ambler

I did not even blunder into the danger; I strayed into it as if it were an interesting-looking tangle of streets in an old town. Certainly I had been warned that they were dangerous; but only to those who warned, I thought, not to me. When I found out that I was mistaken and tried to get out, I found also that I was lost.

Foster’s dramatic skill is well-known in London’s West End theaters. So perhaps it wasn’t so surprising when he was hired by an American newspaper publisher to cover the trial of Yordan Delchev for treason. Accused of membership in the sinister Officer Corps Brotherhood and of masterminding a plot to assassinate his country’s leader, Delchev may in fact be a pawn and his trial all show. But when Foster meets Madame Delchev, the accused’s powerful wife, he suddenly become enmeshed in more life-threatening intrigue than he could have imagined.

This week's book is Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Statistical warning. This book is likely to be moved.

Parable of the Sower — Octavia Butler

We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.

America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal.

Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves.

Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.

This week's book is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante

At that moment I knew what the plebs were, much more clearly than when, years earlier, she had asked me. The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer. They were all laughing, even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the utmost.

This week's book is My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.