Bank of Scotland Colleagues
Book Groups
Have you just read something really fantastic and can’t stop talking about it? Do you love reading but are stuck for what to read next? Or would you like to read more and need a bit of encouragement?
Why not get together with other bank colleagues and start a book group? Groups meet in all sorts of places –libraries, workplaces, homes and pubs - to chat about books in an informal and relaxed atmosphere. Members come from all walks of life and the one thing they share is a love of reading.
Meeting once a month suits most people and the books they choose to discuss range from contemporary fiction -including books nominated for literary prizes –to bestsellers, crime, classics or poetry. The best discussions are usually when the book divides the group into “loved it” and “hated it” camps, leaving plenty of room for discussion!
See Book Group Guidelines and Questions to help you get started
Or, be part of our virtual book club!
What Bank of Scotland is offering and how it works
To get involved please contact ayewrite@materialmc.co.uk with your name as book group leader, your address, the names of people in the group and your choice of book from the list below. We recommend between 4 and 10 members. The first ten groups to register will be sent their book free of charge. These were shortlisted for the Aye Write! Awards 2008. Any colleague can also join the online book club. We are currently reading 4 books and you can join the debate online!
In addition, we have 100 copies of Edwin Morgan’s book of poetry From Saturn to Glasgow to give away on a first-come first-served basis, so hurry and be the first to join a book group!
The Book List
Iain Banks
The Wasp Factory (1984) established Iain Banks as an original voice in Scottish fiction. Since then, he has published more than twenty novels which have attracted critical acclaim as well as the attention of film-makers. The Crow Road (1992) became a successful BBC TV series. Under the name Iain M. Banks, he has also achieved success as a science fiction writer and The Algebraist won the 2005 Hugo Award.
“I write because I love it, I enjoy it, I’ve spent most of my life trying to do it better, and I can make a living from it: beats a day job”.
The Steep Approach to Garbadale is published by Little, Brown.
John Burnside
Dunfermline born poet and novelist John Burnside is a former computer software engineer who now teaches at the University of St Andrews. In 1988 he won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award for his first collection of poetry The Hoop. Feast Days, published in 1992, was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and The Asylum Dance won the Whitbread Poetry Award. His work has also been shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot and Forward poetry prizes.
He is the author of a collection of short stories, several novels and an acclaimed memoir A Lie About My Father.
John Burnside’s latest novel The Devil’s Footprints is published by Cape.
Alasdair Gray
Born in Riddrie, Glasgow, in 1934, Alasdair Gray trained as a painter at Glasgow School of Art and describes himself as a “verbal and pictorial artist” who often combines his artistic and writing talents, for example, by illustrating his own books. He has written for stage, radio and television as well as fiction and short stories.
His 1981 debut novel Lanark is widely regarded as one of the greatest of Scottish novels and won both the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year and Scottish Arts Council Book awards.
Poor Things in 1992 won both Guardian Fiction and Whitbread Novel awards.
Old Men in Love is published by Bloomsbury.
A.L. Kennedy
Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Alison Kennedy was born in Dundee in 1965. Her numerous awards include Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year, Scottish Arts Council Book Award, Mail on Sunday/ John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Somerset Maughan Award.
Day has already won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year and Costa Novel Award 2007. According to the Costa judges:
“We chose A.L. Kennedy as our winner because, through an extraordinary act of ventriloquism, she describes the waste and eventual resurrection of a young life shattered by war. This book is a masterpiece."
Day is published by Jonathan Cape
Dan Rhodes
One of Granta magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists 2003, Dan Rhodes’ novel Timoleon Vieta Come Home won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Born in 1972 he has worked in various jobs including stockroom assistant in a bookshop and teaching in Ho Chi Minh Ciity. He says that 1980’s band The Smiths are “still the soundtrack to my life – I can’t work out if they saved it or ruined it”
His third novel Gold is published by Canongate.
Ali Smith
From the beginning of her literary career Ali Smith has enjoyed critical acclaim, winning the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award in 1995 for Free Love and Other Stories. Her second novel Hotel World, set in a hotel during the course of one night, was shortlisted for both the Orange and Booker prizes. The Accidental, a critical and popular success, won the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award.
She was born in Inverness and was an English lecturer at Strathclyde University before becoming a full time writer.
Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis is published by Canongate.