Welcome to the WORD 2022 Book Club

Nau Mai!

Book Discussion Scheme are proud to be partnering with WORD Christchurch to bring you the inaugural WORD Book Club — a chance for you and your mates to extend and enrich your WORD Festival experience by adding a six-month mini book club to your festival sessions.

Your book club will choose five titles from our curated list of WORD Christchurch 2022 authors, and together you'll read and discuss one title a month for the six months following the Festival. Plus, BDS dispatch to book clubs NZ-wide — so groups can sign up from anywhere in the country!

Read on to find out how it all works, or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your questions.

About / Cost

How to join

Timeline

Books

How does it work?

WORD 2022 Book Clubs will meet once a month for six months. We’ll send your group five books written by WORD 2022 authors, one every month from the time you register.

You can register to participate in the WORD 2022 Book Club anytime between now and 30 September.

What's the cost?

Book Discussion Scheme have worked hard to bring you an amazing offer for the inaugural WORD 2022 Book Club. You’ll receive:

Five book club reads delivered anywhere in NZ (normally $60 per person + $30 per group registration fee)

For the special price of:

$35 per person
+ optional $57.50 per group (if requiring x5 return courier bags for the books)

WORD Book Groups also only need a minimum of three members to get started (normally seven) so you can start experiencing the benefits of book group without having to get a larger group together.

How do we join?

The goal is to get more out of both your reading and your festival experience, so this involves getting at least a couple of friends to join you. Your monthly book club catch-ups will be a chance to discuss the books you've read and share your thoughts and feelings. You may also want to relate what you've read to any relevant sessions from the Festival.

Step One: Rally

Gather a group of between three and ten members for your book club
Nominate a coordinator. They’ll be responsible for handing out and returning the books. If you’re outside of Christchurch, we’ll send your book sets to their address.
Choose a monthly meeting day that works for everyone

Step Two: Register

Complete the registration form ensuring you:

Choose five titles from our curated list of WORD 2022 author works
Include a name and email address for each member
Pay your discounted book club fee

Step Three: Read

Books start arriving (or are ready for pick up) about seven days before each of your monthly meetings
Read one book each month
Meet to discuss each book with your group

Step Four: Return

Return each book set to BDS within seven days of your meeting.
Overdue books may delay your next set, so make use of our convenient return courier bags which enable you to book a pick-up online. BDS HQ in Christchurch also provides an after hours dropbox for returns.

Step Five: Review

Books offered as part of the inaugural WORD 2022 Book Club will later be available to regular BDS book clubs, so we invite your group to send us a review of each title you receive.

Please contact us with any other questions or suggestions — we're keen to hear from you!

Read on to understand more about how your six-month WORD Book Club will go

List of books

When you register, you'll select five titles from this curated list for your book club. About seven days before your first book club meeting, you'll receive the first of your chosen titles, with enough copies for everyone to read the same book at the same time — reading is better when done together!

De Goldi, Kate
Eddy Eddy (Fiction), 2022	Eddy, an orphan who lives with his librarian uncle, has been expelled from school and is grappling with identity, love, death, loss and religion...read more
Back-catalogue
10PM Question, The (Fiction), 2008	Frankie Parsons is an apparently sensible, talented Year 8 with a drumbeat of worrying questions steadily gaining volume in his head. Only Ma takes seriously his catalogue of persistent anxieties, but of course it is Ma who is the cause of the most worrying question of all...read more

Hulme, Keri
Bone People, The (Fiction), 1984	A provocative and poetic novel set in a remote South Island beach community. Hulme casts her magic on three fiercely unique characters who remind us that we, like them, are "nothing more than people". Bound in Maori mythology and Christian symbolism. Booker Prize Winner 1985....read more

Krasnostein, Sarah
Believer, The (Non-Fiction), 2022	Some of the people you will meet believe in things most people don't. Ghosts. UFOs. Heaven and the Devil. The literal creation of the universe in six days. Others believe in things most people would like to. Dying with autonomy. Facing one's own transgressions with an open heart.....read more
Back-catalogue
Trauma Cleaner, The (Non-Fiction), 2017	Compelling and disturbing, this is the candid personal history of a transgender woman as well as an eye-watering uncovering of the specialised world of trauma cleaning...read more

McCarthy, Noelle
Grand (Non-Fiction), 2022	The debut memoir about mothers and daughters, drinking, birth and loss, running away and homecoming from prize-winning writer and broadcaster Noelle McCarthy. From Catholic Ireland in the '70s, '80s and '90s to sparkling Auckland in the first years of the new millennium, Grand is a story of the invisible ties that bind us, of bitter legacies handed down through the generations, and of the leap of faith it takes to change them...read more

Orr, Sue
Loop Tracks (Fiction), 2021	It's 1978: the Auckland abortion clinic has been forced to close and sixteen-year-old Charlie has to fly to Sydney, but the plane is delayed on the tarmac. It's 2019: Charlie's tightly contained Wellington life with her grandson Tommy is interrupted by the unexpected intrusions of Tommy's first girlfriend, Jenna, and the father he has never known, Jim. The year turns, and everything changes again...read more

Pellegrino, Nicky
Don't Sweat It (Non-Fiction), 2022	A candid, warm, and witty investigation into the realities of menopause, Nicky shares her own insights into this often-challenging phase of life, and interviews the experts for the latest, credible research on the many options out there to help women make the right choice for themselves...read more

Shaw, Ruth
Bookseller at the End of the World, The (Non-Fiction), 2022	Ruth Shaw weaves together stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about her favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life. But underlining all her wanderings and adventures are some very deep losses and long-held pain. Balancing that out is her beautiful love story with Lance, and her delightful sense of humour...read more

St John Mandel, Emily
Sea of Tranquility (Fiction), 2022	When detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe...read more
Back-catalogue
Glass Hotel, The (Fiction), 2020	When Vincent, a social chameleon of the highest order meets hotel owner and financier Jonathan Alkailitis, she enters a world centred on wealth. But this 'kingdom of money' with its luxurious complacency is doomed to go the way of all Ponzi schemes...read more
Station Eleven (Fiction), 2014	Moving between their pre-pandemic lives and their post-pandemic realities, this story focuses on a disparate group of people connected to Arthur Leander who is performing King Lear on the night the Georgia Flu hits North America. Centre stage, twenty years on, is a troupe of musicians and actors who tour the remaining pockets of population performing Shakespearean works and classical music...read more

Williams, Pip
Dictionary of Lost Words, The (Fiction), 2020	It seemed inevitable that Esme Nicoll's life would be bound up with the publication of the first Oxford English Dictionary. Initiated in 1879 and completed in 1928, it is at the centre of this story with Esme's life playing out around its development, the rise of the suffrage movement and the horrors of WWI. But Esme has something special to contribute to the herculean task of defining the English language - an abiding passion for the words discarded by the dictionary men, especially those relating to women...read more

WORD Book Club

Registrations for WORD Book Club 2022 are now closed

word book club will return in 2023