Northwest Book Highlights – January 2015

One of life’s simplest pleasures is taking a riveting whodunit or a fantasy tale of transportation to the hearth on a cold winter’s evening. Reading is, by its very nature, a solitary activity – in a good book, we are able to escape the strains and stresses of everyday life, and temporarily experience a world of rival warring factions, complicated love affairs and the lavish parties of the Manhattan elite. But it is perhaps in the act of shared reading that a book can truly come to life. The joy of interpretation and thoughtful discussion of a particular character, novel, or poem can illuminate elements of a text that may otherwise have remained buried. The community book club is at the forefront of such debate, and provides the opportunity to read brilliant books that you may have walked past in a bookshop, share ideas and meet other local bookworms.

For those of you who get excited about the prospect of a one-panel page, an extended gutter, or a dripping speech balloon, MadLab Manchester present a group solely dedicated to the discussion of graphic novels (6 Jan). Though often associated with some sort of teenage quest in masculinity, in popular and marketable comics such as Captain America and Superman, the comic form is actually hugely diverse and wide-ranging. Graphic novelists like Marjane Satrapi, Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman have published provocative and challenging work that interrogates complex issues about the politics of the hijab, the West’s partial perception of the Middle East and the horrific consequences of a dictatorial state. Go along and join the comic book resurgence.

Meanwhile, fans of sci-fi don’t have to look very far, as MadLab’s science fiction book club is also on offer. With university courses devoted to its study and worldwide conventions attracting thousands of fans every year, the sci-fi genre is colossally popular; expect to read books ranging from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to William Gibson’s Burning Chrome, all of which speak to a 21st-century concern about the tech takeover and its ramifications.

Elsewhere, the regeneration of Gaskell House provides a flashback into Manchester’s renowned literary past. The Elizabeth Gaskell Book Club discusses the endurance of the Victorian novel and explores why writers like Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde continue to linger in the modern imagination.

Bold Street’s Leaf cafe promises the inspired blend of tea – of the gunpowder supreme, champagne cassis and fairy wings varieties – and literature. January’s book club offering is a time-bending, genre crossover book by Claire North (a penname of the author Catherine Webb) called The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. Prepare your ideas on reincarnation, the meaning of existence, or just how you fancy a bit of time travel.

Finally, for anyone who missed Manchester Literature Festival’s assortment of literary delights last year, do not fear. At Waterstones Deansgate on 22 Jan, the festival invites Norwegian novelists Karl Ove Knausgaard and Tore Renberg to an event celebrating Scandinavian writing. Much has been made of the apparent resurgence of Nordic Noir on our TV screens (see The Killing and Borgen); this evening promises a glimpse into the region’s parallel literary scene. And, on 21 Jan, FACT is hosting Torque Symposium: An Act of Reading, an event in which writers, curators and political theorists will explore the changing landscape of reading and ask how the act of reading is being transformed by modern culture and technology.