On Thursday 26 March, the We Love Literature Club held its first session! To inaugurate our book club, we invited anyone interested in literature to come along and talk about a book of their choosing. We met at the Sala Filo in our Faculty’s building, where we had to borrow quite a few extra chairs to accommodate all the participants that showed up. We would like to thank all the 30 people who came to our first session and shared a recommendation!
In this first meeting, we talked about a wide range of books, from recently published novels to all-time classics. The oldest novel brought to the club was Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813), about intelligent and stubborn Elizabeth Bennet who, despite a bad first impression, ends up falling for the proud but honorable Mr Darcy. The most recent one was Maite, by Fernando Aramburu (2026), which follows a family from San Sebastián during a national episode of collective trauma: the kidnapping and murder of Miguel Ángel Blanco by ETA in 1997.
We touched many different genres, including drama–with plays such as Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams–and short stories, with the speculative fiction anthology Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein. Speaking of speculative fiction, afrofuturism was a popular subgenre: several participants talked about the novels Kindred and Dawn by Octavia E. Butler, and An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon.
And because in this degree we love ourselves a little trauma, we couldn’t not talk about novels dealing with emotional turmoil, such as Milkman by Anna Burns, set during the Irish Troubles, and Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart, about a gay 15-year-old teenager living in working-class Glasgow in the 1990s. Queer identity was present in many other recommendations, including Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, and Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo. However, not everything was sad and traumatic: there was also room for swoony stories with happy endings, like Love Redesigned, by Lauren Asher.
In sum, there was a book for everyone, from the plot-driven, avid readers to the lovers of the “in this book, nothing really happens”. We have included the complete list of the books mentioned in the club at the end of this post, so you can check out any of the novels that caught your attention.
The next session of our book club will be held on the 21st of April, and we will discuss a classic of English literature: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë. If you haven’t read it yet, hit play on that Kate Bush soundtrack and let yourself be hooked by this story of passion and ghosts. And in case you were wondering, yes, talking about its adaptations is allowed!
Thank you all again for taking part in this project, and we hope to see you in our next session!
Happy reading,
The We Love Literature Club.
List of books mentioned on Thursday 26 March:
Last Night at the Telegraph Club — Malinda Lo — 2021
Hungerstone — Kat Dunn — 2023
Kindred — Octavia E. Butler — 1979
The Shrinking Man — Richard Matheson — 1956
Young Mungo — Douglas Stuart — 2022
Maite — Fernando Aramburu — 2026
Children of the New World — Alexander Weinstein — 2016
Way Down East — Lottie Blair Parker / Joseph R. Grismer — 1897
Milkman — Anna Burns — 2018
Mr Loverman — Bernardine Evaristo — 2013
The Sovereign (Magic of the Lost, Book 3) — C. L. Clark — 2025
A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini — 2007
The Glass Menagerie — Tennessee Williams — 1944
Drifts — Kate Zambreno — 2020
An Unkindness of Ghosts — Rivers Solomon — 2017
Room — Emma Donoghue — 2010
Everything I Never Told You — Celeste Ng — 2014
Mindf*ck Series — S.T. Abby — 2016–2017
Speak — Laurie Halse Anderson — 1999
Love Redesigned — Lauren Asher — 2023
Arsenic and Old Lace — Joseph Kesselring — 1939
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen — 1813
Emma — Jane Austen — 1815
A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles — 2016
A Council of Dolls — Mona Susan Power — 2023
My Year of Rest and Relaxation — Ottessa Moshfegh — 2018
The Secret History — Donna Tartt — 1992
Dawn (The Xenogenesis, Book 1) — Octavia E. Butler — 1987
The Reappearance of Rachel Price — Holly Jackson— 2024
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