This month our colleagues at Winchester Library have launched their Big Jubilee Read. Read on to find out more about this special Hampshire Libraries challenge.
If you’re a keen reader The Big Jubilee Read could be just the challenge you’re looking for. Featuring 70 titles, one for each year of Her Majesty The Queen’s reign, the books were all selected by a panel of experts to reflect our changing nation through fiction.
Each decade, from the 1950s to the 2020s includes ten books written by authors from Commonwealth countries including Australia, Canada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago and the UK.
The star-studded list of authors which includes Margaret Atwood, E. R. Braithwaite, Anthony Burgess, John le Carré, Bernardine Evaristo, Seamus Heaney, Kazuo Ishiguro, Marlon James, Hilary Mantel, Andrea Levy, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith, Douglas Stuart, Derek Walcott, and Markus Zusak; brings some of the best writers of the last 70 years back into the limelight.
In Hampshire, we have purchased 11 full sets of the collection of 70 books, plus 22 additional reading group sets of key titles from every decade. To complement the full sets of printed books we have also purchased the titles as eBooks and eAudiobooks, where they were available, which can be borrowed for free through the BorrowBox app.
The full sets of the collection of seventy books, which can also be reserved for a small charge and sent to any public library in Hampshire, will be based at the following libraries from Saturday 28 May for the remainder of 2022.
- The Arc, Winchester
- Andover Library
- Basingstoke Discovery Centre
- Chandler’s Ford Library
- Fareham Library
- Farnborough Library
- Fleet Library
- Gosport Discovery Centre
- Lymington Library
- Petersfield Library
- Waterlooville Library
For the full list of books please visit this website. Which book will you read first? Share your thoughts, favourite reading spots and reviews with us on Instagram or Facebook.
