Book Salad

Book Salad meets at the end of the month at 6:30pm, usually on a Tuesday, and you're very welcome to join us. To make a salad you put together different things you'd like to eat, and we do the same with reading. We try all kinds of books, by all kinds of people. We limit numbers to fifteen attendees and it's very friendly and informal.

For our seventh book of 2026, we will read 'The Man Who Was Thursday' by G.K. Chesterton, chosen because of an interview with the 'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell' and 'Piranesi' author Susanna Clarke, when she said it was perhaps the book she'd have most wanted to have written herself. 

Here's the blurb:

The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

"Gabriel Syme is dispatched by Scotland Yard on a secret mission to infiltrate the Central Anarchist Council – an organization plotting to bring down the existing social order. The seven members of the group are named after days of the week, with the mysterious Sunday – who calls himself ‘the Sabbath and the peace of God’ – as their leader and mastermind. Having successfully infiltrated their ranks, Syme himself becomes known as ‘Thursday’. But he soon finds himself in a surreal waking nightmare, in which the lines between freedom and order, fact and fiction, become irrevocably blurred.

Written in 1908, and drawing heavily on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb plots, The Man Who Was Thursday remains uncannily relevant. It is a fascinating mystery, a spellbinding allegory and an entirely chilling classic of crime fiction."

What we might read next

I am asked sometimes for a provisional reading list for the rest of our year, so here it is. After a few months of knowing which books to choose, I'm less sure about the next few. I'll give it some thought and by the time we meet again in August I'll have a clearer list for the months ahead.

August: 'The Man Who Was Thursday' by G.K. Chesterton

September: 'Captains of the Sands' by Jorge Amado / 'Parable of the Sower' by Octavia Butler

October: 'The Impostor and Other Stories' by Silvina Ocampo

November: 'The Sundial' by Shirley Jackson / 'An Infinite Sadness' by Antonio Xerxenesky

December: 'A Chess Story' by Stefan Zweig (We don't meet in December but this is the short book I've decided I'll be reading)

January: 'The Blizzard' by Vladimir Sorokin ?

February: 'The Topeka School' by Ben Lerner ?

March: 'The Silver Bone' by Andrey Kurkov ?

March: ???