there's more to life than books you know, but not much more

Yellow Caribou Readers

If you like talking about literature in pubs, we're the book group for you!

The Yellow Caribou Readers is a book group which meets monthly in Sheffield, England.

We read a wide range of books, usually fiction, but sometimes biography, poetry or uncategorisable. The only rule being that they are available in paperback. See below for our past reads.

We now meet on the third WEDNESDAY of the month at 8.30pm at the University Arms, 197 Brook Hill, Sheffield. Usually we are in the Darts Room, upstairs.

For more information about the Yellow Caribou Readers, please send an email to tom [at] idiolect [dot] org [dot] uk

or join our Facebook group.

Forthcoming reads

2024

17 Jan Jill by Philip Larkin

21 Feb The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

20 March Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

17 April Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

15 May My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

19 June Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Books we've read

2023

18 January The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

15 February A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

15 March People Who Eat Darkness: Love, Grief and a Journey into Japan’s Shadows by Richard Lloyd Parry

19 April Nothing on Earth by Connor O’Callaghan

17 May Fracture: Adventures of a Broken Body by Ann Oakley

21 June City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis

19 July The Sea by John Banville

16 August The Circle by Dave Eggers

20 Sept The Good Lion by Len Doherty

18 Oct Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

15 Nov No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

20 Dec A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

2022

19 January Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.

16 February A River Called Time by Courttia Newland

16 March The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald

20 April Primeval and other Times by Olga Tokarczuk

18 May Libra by Don Delillo

15 June In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova

20 July Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

17 August Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

21 September Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

19 October The Yield by Tara June Winch.

16 November Municipal Gothic: 13 ghost stories by Ray Newman

21 December Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

2021

20 January Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

17 February Right Ho, Jeeves by PG Woodhouse

17 March The Machine Stops by E M Forster

21 April Measures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo

19 May The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

16 June A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

21 July The Doll: Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier

18 August The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carre

15 Sept Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

20 October The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

17 November Just Us by Claudia Rankine

15 December Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar

2020

15 Jan The Vegetarian by Han Kang

19 Feb Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

18 Mar My Cousin My Gastroenterologist by Mark Leyner

15 Apr Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland

20 May The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

17 June The Bell by Iris Murdoch

15 July Amalgamemnon by Christine Brooke-Rose

19 August Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

16 Sept Go tell it on the mountain by James Baldwin

21 Oct Afropean by Johny Pitts.

18 Nov Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

16 Dec The Ace of Lightning by Stephen-Paul Martin

2019

Jan 16th Brief Interviews With Hideous Men By David Foster Wallace

Feb 20th The Abode of Fancy by Sam Coll

March 20th Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

April 17th A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

May 15th Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

June 19th Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

17 Jul Berg by Ann Quin

21 Aug A Death in the Family: My Struggle, book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

18 Sep Philip Larkin Poems: Selected By Martin Amis (Faber Poetry)

16 Oct Autumn by Ali Smith

20 Nov Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

18 Dec Border Districts by Gerald Murnane

2018

JAN 17th - Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future by Svetlana Alexievich

FEB 21st - The Bear and The Nightingale by Katherine Arden

MARCH 21st - Fingers In The Sparkle Jar: A Memoir By Chris Packham

APRIL 18th - Temporary People Paperback by Deepak Unnikrishnan

MAY 23rd - My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

JUNE 20th - To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann (translated by Shaun Whiteside)

July 18th The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge

August 15th The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

September 19th War with the Newts by Karel Čapek

October 17th The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin.

November 21st Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

December 19th Last Stories by William Trevora

2017

18th Jan - Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen

15th Feb - The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

15th Mar - The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

19th Apr - Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin

17th May - The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

21st Jun - The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett

July 19th - Doll's Alphabet by Camilla Grudova

August 16th - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina

Sept 20th - The Shadow of the Wind: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books 1 by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Oct 18th - All Involved by Ryan Gattis

Nov 15th - The Interpreter by Suki Kim

Dec 20th - Highrise by JG Ballard

2016

20th January - The Inheritors by William Golding

17th February - The Complete Grimm's Fairytales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

16th March - The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

20th April - Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake:

18th May - The Gap of Time: The Winter's Tale Retold by Jeanette Winterson

15th June - Equus by Peter Shaffer

20th July Sea Lovers by Valerie Martin

17th Aug White Noise by Don Delillo

15th Sept The Poetry Deal by Diane di Prima

19th Oct Purity by Jonathan Franzen

16th Nov Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

21st Dec The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher J Koch

2015

21 January 2015 - Chocky by John Wyndham

18 February 2015 - The Keep by Jennifer Egan

18 March 2015 - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

15 April 2015 - The Getaway by Jim Thompson

20 May 2015 - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

17 June 2015 - A Question of Loyalties by Allan Massie

July 15th: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

August 19th: The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth

September 16th: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

October 21st: The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

November 18th: The White Album by Joan Didion

December 16th: The Bees by Laline Paull

2014

15 January 2014 *CHANGE OF DATE, NOW 22 January 2014*

A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

19 February 2014

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

19 March 2014

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

16 April 2014

The Sea Room by Adam Nicholson

21 May 2014

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

18 June 2014

Stoner by John Williams

16 July 2014

Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

20 August 2014

The Plague by Albert Camus

17 September 2014

Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux

15 October 2014

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

19 November 2014

Men in Space by Tom McCarthy

17 December 2014

The Winter Book by Tove Jannson

2013

16 January 2013

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

20 February 2013

Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook

20 March 2013

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990)

17 April 2013

Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

15 May 2013

Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredrikssong

19 June 2013

Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barber

17 June 2013

Pure by Andrew Miller

21 August 2013

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

18 September 2013

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson.

16 October 2013

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo.

20 November 2013

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

18 December 2013

The Killing of Emma Gross by Damien Seaman

2012

19 January 2012

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

16 February 2012

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

22 March 2012

The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte

19 April 2012

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

17 May 2012

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

21 June 2012

Keep The Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

26 July 2012 n.b. Amended date.

The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

16 August 2012

The Wild Places byRobert Macfarlane

20 September 2012

Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace

18 October 2012

Why be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

15 November 2012

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

20 December 2012

Spies by Michael Frayn

2011

Thursday 21st January

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Thursday 17 February

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban

Thursday 17th March

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Thursday 21st April

number9dream by David Mitchell

Thursday 19 May

Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

Thursday 16th June

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

18 August 2011

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

15 September 2011

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

20 October 2011

Candide by Voltaire

17 November 2011

The City & the City by China Melville

15 December 2011

The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination by Javier Cercas and Anne McLean

2010

15 July Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5

19 August Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

16 September Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

21 October Death and The Penguin - Andrey Kurkov

18 November Donna Tartt – The Secret History

16 December Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

January - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

February - Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye

March - The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

April - Paradise Lost by John Milton

May - Raymond Queneau: Zazie in the Metro

June - Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2009

15th Jan - If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

19th Feb - Landor's Tower: Or, the Imaginary Conversations by Iain Sinclair

19th March - Watchmen by Alan Moore

16th April - Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

21st May - The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

18th June - The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

16th July - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

20th August - The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

17th September - Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

15th October - The Waves by Virginia Woolf

19th November - 11 Minutes by Paulo Coelho

17th December - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

2008

January 17th - One Good Turn By Kate Atkinson

February 21st - Under The Frog by Tibor Fischer

March 20th - The Cloud-spotters guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney

17th April - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Attwood

15th May - On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

19th June - Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland

17th July - The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by GK Chesterton

21st August - Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson

18th Sept - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

16th October - A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick

20th November - Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction by Kate Wheeler

18th December - All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

2007

January 18th - Count Magnus and Other Stories, M.R.James (wintery...dark nights of January and a book of stories mean that we can at least read some of this book during the next three short weeks. This one was MOST popular - the fave)

February 15th - Love in a Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez(Love is always important in February)

March 15th - Stuart a Life Backwards, Alexander Masters (mmmmm cheery stuff for March, which is usually a wintery load of rubbish kind of month in my experience)

April 19th - The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (a long book...so we have some easter bank holiday for catching up on reading)

May 17th - Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (another long one with a May day to help)

June 21st - Oracle Night, Paul Auster (lighter nights and a spot of sun means we can all cope with with some chilling Brooklyn storytelling.)

19th July - Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

16th August - Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis

20th September - Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

18th October - My Ear at His Heart, Hanif Kureishi

15th November - Vineland, Thomas Pynchon

13th December - Thus Spake Zaruthustra, Friedrich Nietzsche - get the full text of the book, legally and for free from Project Gutenberg

2006

February 16th - The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills

All is not as it seems in this witty sardonic black comedy.

March 16th - The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

New-age existentialist fable where 'Heaven' is more like that of 'The Lovely Bones' than the afterworld of 'Paradise Lost'.

April 20th - Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

From the author of 'The Virgin Suicides'. A dramatic change of style and a BIG book about a rare genetic mutation and several generations of a Greek-American family. A nominated title for the Big Gay Read promotion.

May 18th - Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize, Adichie's novel is the story of family secrets set in Nigeria during a time of political unrest.

June 15th - Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden

Set in the First World War, Three Day Road is told through the eyes of two Canadian Cree Indians: Niska, the last Indian woman living off the land in Canada, and her nephew, Xavier. Race, Culture, and little known 20th century history.

July 20th - A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

17th August - We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

21st September - Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome

19th October - The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch

16th November - Affinity, Sarah Waters

14th December - Northern Lights, Philip Pullman