Piccadilly Line readers shortlisted for national prize

1:30pm Tuesday 26th May 2009

By Sarah Cosgrove

A GROUP of dedicated readers who meet up and down the Piccadilly Line have been shortlisted for the UK's only annual award for reading groups.

The North London Reading Group was set up by Southgate residents, Paul Drinkwater and Dawn Barnes, both 32, when they moved to the area in 2007.

They set up a web page asking if anybody was interested in joining a reading group and have had so many enquiries they've spawned four more groups.

Now they are one of four groups in the running for the 2009 Penguin Orange Readers' Group Prize.

Public servant, Mr Drinkwater, 32, said he was thrilled the group had made the shortlist and he hoped it would encourage more people to set up more groups.

Ms Barnes, who works in public relations, said: "We met at a book group in Oxford in the first place and it was a great way of making friends and meeting people.

"Lots of people seem to be interested, every three or four months we're setting up a new group.

"You read stuff you wouldn't normally read so it gets you out of your comfort zone and is not something most people have done since university.

"Having said that we're not all English graduates, we have engineers and psychologists for example too."

But successful as they may have been, Ms Barnes said there was always room for improvement.

"We don't get as many men as we would like and everybody tends to be between 25 and 35. It would be nice to have more people from different backgrounds."

Members meet monthly in pubs or people's houses close to stops on the Picadilly Line. Each month one member chooses a reasonably-sized book - War and Peace-sized tomes are not allowed - for everyone to read and discuss at the next meeting.

They also take part in additional literary activities such as BookSlam and PoeJazzi evenings.

Entrants to the competition were asked to demonstrate how they made reading social.

Penguin's digital marketing director, Anna Rafferty, Digital Marketing Director from Penguin UK commented: “We know that when you’ve finished a great book, the first thing you want to do is talk about it. Readers love to discuss why it turned out like that or to ponder those still-unanswered questions, to share what they loved about the ending or what they hated about the protagonist. "This prize proves that those conversations are happening more than ever. Books are true social currency.”