Rainbow Reading Group

Rainbow Reading Group logo

The Rainbow Reading Group is an LGBT Reading Group, organised by Croydon Area Gay Society (CAGS) in conjunction with Croydon Library. It meets monthly in the Central Library, Croydon.

It was started in October 2010, but had its official opening in February 2011 with a visit by Issy Festing, author of The Bird Keeper. Fiona Shaw, author of A Stone's Throw, was the guest in February 2013, and Stevie Henden, author of The Lost Boy, the Doodlebug, and the Mysterious Number 80 was the guest in February 2014.

Books discussed

Books so far read and discussed (to the end of 2014):

• The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany
• Giovanni's Room, and Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• The Gulf between us by Geraldine Bedell
• Shameless by Paul Burston
• Love is where it Falls by Simon Callow
• Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• Retreat from Love by Colette
• The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• Astray by Emma Donoghue
• Justine by Lawrence Durrell
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Bird Keeper by Issy Festing
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg
• Maurice by E M Forster
• Rough Music by Patrick Gale
• Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
• The Lost Boy, the Doodlebug, and the Mysterious Number 80 by Stevie Henden
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
• The Rainbow by D H Lawrence
• Tales of the City, and Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
• A Darker Domain by Val McDermid
• Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
• At my Mother's Knee and Other Low Joints by Paul O'Grady
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
• A Stone's Throw and Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw
• Sacred Country by Rose Tremain
• The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson
• The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
• Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh
• Affinity , Fingersmith, The Night Watch, and Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• My Lives by Edmund White
• Oranges are not the only Fruit, Written on the Body and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

• Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
• Mr Clive & Mr Page by Neil Bartletts
• The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin
• Trumpet by Jackie Kay
• Valentine Grey
• Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut
• Valentine Grey by Sandi Toksvig
• Smut by Alan Bennett
• Carol by Patricia Highsmith
• Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Mrs Keppel and her Daughter by Diana Souhami
• Briefs Encountered by Julian Clary