Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
― Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)

On 3^rd March 2005, we organised our first book club meeting, which took place in Nicola’s Bookshop in Brussels (BE). In 2024-2025, we celebrated the 20^th anniversary of Nicola’s Book Club with a special book club season!

Nicola selected 8 books by both men and women writers from each of the following regions of the world: Africa, Caribbean, Asia, Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America. In this way, we travelled the world through the pages of these books. Over the last 20 years, we have now read a total of 288 books by authors from 99 countries.

The 8 books in our 20^th anniversary book club season were:

• 24 October 2024 – “Happiness^TM” by Will Ferguson (North America – Canada)
• 21 November 2024 – “A Long Petal of the Sea” by Isabel Allende (South America – Chile)
• 19 December 2024 – “Claire of the Sea Light” by Edwidge Danticat (Caribbean – Haiti)
• 23 January 2025 – “Beyond the Door of No Return” by David Diop (Africa – Senegal)
• 13 February 2025 – Extra Book Club meeting!
• 3 March 2025* – “Happiness” by Aminatta Forna (Europe – UK/London)
• 10 April 2025 – “No One Prayed Over Their Graves” by Khaled Khalifa (Middle East – Syria)
• 8 May 2025 – “How We Disappeared” by Jing-Jing Lee (Asia – Singapore)
• 5 June 2025 – “Amnesia” by Peter Carey (Pacific – Australia)

Nicola organised online meetings to discuss these books with readers and joined our community on Facebook to share their thoughts and comments on them.

Here’s to Another Way to Travel and See the World!

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* On Saturday, 8th March 2025, we celebrated Nicola’s Book Club’s 20^th anniversary during a special live event at the De Valera Library during the Ennis Book Club Festival in Co. Clare, Ireland.

Nicola started off the event by sharing how her book club got started and her unique approach to selecting the books we read in it. Then she opened the floor to all the readers who had shown up, so they could share their book club stories with us. One group had travelled all the way from Sweden to attend the festival!

After that, we discussed our book of the month, “Happiness”. The overall impression of it was positive, and one reader highly recommended the audio version as it brings to life the many different accents of the characters in the story.

Nicola and a few members of her book club — Mary, Jana, Lorena and Florence — travelled from Brussels for this special occasion. They had great craic!

📷 Valentina (photos)