
Following on from the session in the Writers festival about the Orange prize, I stumbled upon this article on the Guardian Unlimited blog. The Orange Prize not ony deals with award winning books and funding towards Literary and Educational causes, it also hands out prizes for the best Book Group in the UK. The winner for this year themes its food and venues to the books it reads.
13 members dined on deep fried crickets when reading Geoff Ryman’s Cambodia-set The King’s Last Song, eyeball gobstoppers when discussing Michel Faber’s hitchhiker horror Under the Skin, and chocolate fountains and champagne for Jeanette Winterson’s erotic novel Written on the Body.
This group also likes to match the venues in which they meet to the books they are reading.
meeting in a pub below the Forth Road Bridge when discussing The Thirty-Nine Steps. Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions saw members dressing up as characters from the book. “After a few glasses of wine it’s quite fun, and it brings more to the books as it makes us fully experience them,”
So I’m thinking now about ways in which all you book group members could spice things up a bit? How about a Japanese theme for Memoirs of a Geisha, combat fatigues for Catch 22, eat in the foodhall at Westfields when discussing What was lost, Lord of the rings could benefit from a trip to middle earth, and big bloomers would be mandatory when Bridget Jones’s Diary features. The list could be endless, and other suggestions?