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Graiguenamanagh Book Club

Graiguenamanagh Library Book Club was founded in 2007 by library staff member Majella Byrne and has grown and developed since its beginning.

• The meetings usually last 1 hour approximately.
• There are usually from 10 to 15 members in attendance.
• We read everything from classics to bestselling fiction and share our thoughts with each other in an open and friendly atmosphere.
• We regularly meet outside the library too and go on field trips attending author events, plays, films, and are always open to new experiences and adventures.
• We believe books are like sweets with an infinite variety of flavours just waiting to be sampled and shared among friends.
• Our book club is open to all and we welcome new members.

For more information contact Alicia Dunphy, Graiguenamanagh Library - 056 77 94178 or

email: graiguenamanagh@kilkennylibrary.ie

When we meet 

The Book Club meets on the first Tuesday of each month @7pm in the library unless otherwise     advertised.

What we have read or are reading

At the moment we are reading New York Times bestseller

 “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot”

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.

Soon to be made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, this New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It’s a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of.

Below is a selection of titles that we have read in the past:                     

• Sarah’s Key by Tatania de Rosenay                                                         
• The Help by Katherine Stockett
• The red tent by Anita Diamant
• Blood sisters by Barbara Keating
• To my daughter in France by Barbara Keating
• Let the great world spin by Colum McCann
• Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor
• The memory keeper’s daughter by Kim Edwards
• In my sisters shoes by Sinead Moriarty
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
• A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseni
• The island by Victoria Hislop
• The Return by Victoria Hislop
• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
• With my lazy eye by Julia Kelly
• Water for elephants by Sarah Gruen
• Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
• The five people you meet in heaven by Mitch Albom
• The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
• The distant Hours by Kate Morton
• The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
• Dragon Tattoo Books by Stieg Larsson
• Any Books by Santa Montefiore
• The Twilight saga by Stephanie Meyer