Glasgow Women’s Library Book Group is welcoming and inspiring, connecting women* who like reading with each other and to a host of amazing and surprising new reads. The book group is one of the Library’s longest running and most popular regular groups, meeting once a month at GWL.
Join the Book Group
The Book Group is very popular and in light of this, we’ve created a structure which means that more women are able to take part. Membership of the group lasts for 12 months and membership changes during the Summer. This means that if you join the group in August one year, your membership will come to an end in July the next year. During this time, you’ll take part in 12 meetings and the facilitator will also share information, advice and support to enable the group to continue in a self-directed way (without facilitation from GWL) beyond the 12 months, if you wish it to. We hope this means more women are able to take part and more informal book groups are created!
In general, the Book Group meets on the last Thursday evening of the month and runs on a suggested donation of £1-£3 from members per monthly meeting. This donation enables the Book Group to continue to run, as we do not have another source of funding, so please donate what you can. Alternatively this is a group that is free to Friends of GWL.
The Book Group offers members: the loan of books (in partnership with the Mitchell Libraries readership development scheme), a welcoming environment, tea and coffee, email updates and group facilitation. You are also contributing to a unique and precious resource in Scotland and are introduced to a very varied reading list!
Books are distributed at each meeting to members, with spare copies left for collection in the Library. After reading, books can either be left at the Library, or returned to any Glasgow City Council public library.
In the meantime, if you are not already a Glasgow Women’s Library borrower then do consider signing up here or pop in to the library and complete a borrower form, so you can begin borrowing books from our collection!
*The GWL Book Group is open to all women, inclusive of Trans and Intersex women, as well as non-binary and gender fluid people who are comfortable in a space that centres the experience of women.
Some of the books we have discussed
Books selected have included contemporary writing by Scottish writers and classic fiction. Over the past three years the Book Club has read the following:
- Hot Milk – Deborah Levy
- A Mercy – Toni Morrison
- The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters
- Circe – Madeline Miller
- NW – Zadie Smith
- Minaret – Leila Aboulela
- Lighthousekeeping – Jeanette Winterson
- How to be Both – Ali Smith
- Open the Door! – Catherine Carswell
- Milkman – Anna Burns
- Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
- Unsheltered – Barbara Kingsolver
- A Far Cry from Kensington – Muriel Spark
- The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
- The Position – Meg Wolitzer
- Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine – Gail Honeyman
- The Gracekeepers – Kirsty Logan
- My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
- The Bricks that Built the Houses – Kate Tempest
- Away – Amy Bloom
