What We've Been Up To
Posted on June 18th 2025
Book Club: A Review of the Year
Over the past year, HCL6F Book Club enrichment students have explored an array of different literary styles.
At the beginning of the year, the sessions were genre-themed. Students voted for which genre they would like to explore each half term, and had a free choice of books within that genre. First up was Thriller and Mystery books, with authors such as Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty and Karen M. McManus rated highly by our students. The next genre students voted for was Romance. We debated the various tropes of Romance novels, such as friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers and secondchance romance. The most popular Romance authors among our students were Colleen Hoover and Uzma Jalaluddin.
Moving into the spring term, the group switched to communal reading. Our first group book was Orbital by Samantha Harvey, this year’s Booker Prize winner. The novel is a meditative account of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. While the literary style of the novel is very beautiful, the general consensus among the group was that the narrative was too slow and lacking in action.
Our next read was Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. This magical realism novel is set in Tokyo café which offers its customers the chance to travel through time—as long as they return before the coffee gets cold. The characters use time travel to explore a range of romantic and family situations, and the overall tone of the novel is uplifting. A few students were not keen, but generally this novel was popular with the group.
Our current and final read of the year is Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner. One of the mostborrowed books from out library, this novel tells the story of the friendship between two boys in 1970s Afghanistan.
By Mrs Sharrock-Harris, Librarian
