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 December 2018):

• Blood Relatives by Stevan Alcock
• The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al Aswany
• Giovanni's Room, Go Tell it on the Mountain and Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
• Mr Clive & Mr Page and Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall by Neil Barlett
• Days without End by Sebastian Barry
• Gay Berlin - Birthplace of a Modern Identity by Robert Beachey
• The Gulf between us by Geraldine Bedell
• Leaving Tangiers by Tahar Ben Jelloun
• Smut by Alan Bennett
• Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Shameless by Paul Burston
• The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
• Love is where it Falls by Simon Callow
• Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
• Briefs Encountered by Julian Clary
• Retreat from Love by Colette
• The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
• Not my Father's Son by Alan Cumming
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham
• A Boxful of Ideas: Poetry & Prose by LGBT Writers edited by John Dixon and Jeffrey Doorn
• Astray by Emma Donoghue
• In A Hidden Room by Stella Duffy
• James Miranda Barry by Patricia Duncker
• Justine by Lawrence Durrell
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo
• In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
• The Bird Keeper by Issy Festing
• Over the Rainbow: Money Class & Homophobia by Nicola Field
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg
• Maurice by E M Forster
• Rough Music, A Place Called Winter and Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale
• Arctic Summer and In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
• Carrington: A Life by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
• Black and Gay in the UK: An Anthology by John R Gordon
• Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
• The Lost Boy, the Doodlebug, and the Mysterious Number 80 by Stevie Henden
• Carol by Patricia Highsmith
• Speak my Language and other stories edited by Torsen Højer
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
• Goodbye to Berlin, and A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
• Trumpet, and The Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
• Mr Foote's Other Leg by Ian Kelly
• The Rainbow by D H Lawrence
• The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
• Tales of the City, Michael Tolliver Lives, and The Days of Anna Madrigal 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
• Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
• Lord Cucumber & the Boy Hairdresser by Joe Orton
• The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
• Spectacles by Sue Perkins
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Twenty-Two Eighty-Four by Christopher Preston
• Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
• The Friendly Young Ladies and The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
• The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
• A Stone's Throw, and Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw
• Mrs Keppel and her Daughter and Gluck by Diana Souhami
• The City of Devi by Manil Suri
• Lies we tell Ourselves by Robin Talley
• Valentine Grey by Sandi Toksvig
• Sacred Country by Rose Tremain
• The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson
• Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal
• The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
• Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh
• Affinity, Fingersmith, The Night Watch, Tipping the Velvet and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
• My Lives by Edmund White
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
• Alexander McQueen: Beneath the Skin by Andrew Wilson
• 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