Virtual Book Club

Message from Melanie Jordan, President, The Insurance Institute of Leeds

As a self-professed book worm having resumed duties as President from the 21st April one of the things I’d been looking forward to trying was a local book club so that anyone interested could meet up and enjoy a couple of hours discussing our favourite books. Obviously we can’t meet up in person at the moment but I don’t see any reason we can’t still give this a go.

First of all don’t fear I won’t be making anyone read any Insurance/Financial books or study texts and rather than picking the same book for everyone to read the idea will be that each month we will have a theme. Each month we will announce next month’s theme and a date for us to ‘meet up’ (at the moment that will probably be via Zoom), you’ll have a month to read a book of your choosing that you feel fits the theme and then we can all have a good chat and compare about what we’ve read.

Given everything that is going on in the world at the moment the first theme is going to be ‘A book that makes you Smile’. Bit of a wide one here I know but I think we all need a bit of cheering up and I think we’ll all enjoy comparing each other’s books and maybe getting ideas for other things we might fancy reading ourselves. Just to give you some ideas your book could be something by a comedian that makes you laugh, it could be your go to ‘comfort’ read that you’ve read over and over again or maybe it will be a true life heart-warming biography.

The date of the first meetup will be the evening of the 18th May, joining details will follow closer to the time but if you could to express your interest by clicking below so we can get an idea of numbers.

I know at the moment options are more limited in terms of acquiring books but just to give you some ideas you could try:
• Kindle Books
• Audio Subscriptions such as Audible
• Free books online from places such as Project Gutenberg - Click here
• You may have a little free library within walking distance of your house that you could reach on a daily walk (please be careful with social distancing/use of hand wash to sanitise when looking through the books etc). Or alternatively here is a link to a borrowing website linked to Leeds Libraries.

If anyone wants a quick chat about this new idea feel free to get in touch with me via LinkedIn.