Emily's Regent's Park Walking Book Club - June - Giovanni's Room
For Pride, we'll walk and talk in Regent's Park, discussing James Baldwin's landmark work of gay writing about a fated love triangle.
Date and time
Location
Daunt Books Marylebone
84 Marylebone High Street London W1U 4QW United KingdomRefund Policy
About this event
- Event lasts 1 hour 45 minutes
A landmark work of gay writing, Giovanni’s Room is about a fated love triangle: David, an American in 1950s Paris, who has a tormented affair with Giovanni, an Italian barman, while his fiancee is away in Spain. Baldwin begins his story on the eve of Giovanni’s execution, after David has abandoned him … What follows is a painful articulation of shame and powerful exploration of conflicted desire, convention and sexual identity.
Find out masses more about all our books on our substack: https://emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com
N.B. Please ensure that you have read the book BEFORE coming on the walk - or it risks spoiling the event for other walkers. If you've don't quite have time to read the book, please consider instead joining the Monday evening Zoom, for which reading the book isn't a prerequisite.
Frequently asked questions
The event lasts for an hour and three quarters, but only about half of that is taken up with walking. There are plenty of stops to enable group discussion.
Yes. When we walk and talk, we naturally split into small groups of two/three/four people chatting. If you haven't read the book, you can't discuss it with your companion thereby impacting their experience. If you'd rather just listen to the discussion, please do join our zoom meeting instead.
Sorry you didn't like this one! But please definitely do still come along. I would love to hear your critique of the book, and, after our discussion, you might just change your mind about it.
Please dress appropriately for a walk in the park. The paths are in great condition, but there is little shelter against the rain or sun. Think hats (for insulation or for shade), sensible shoes, sun lotion...
Just bring yourself, sensibly attired (see above), and perhaps a bottle of water. You don't need to bring your copy of the book, but you are welcome to in case you'd like to follow along with any passages that I read out.
Daunt Books kindly gives members of Emily's Walking Book Club 10% off our books. (N.B. I don't get a commission on this!) You can pick them up in store, or online from them, or from other good bookshops and libraries.
I am committed to keeping this book club open to everybody. In my mind, the tickets are £10 each, but if you can't afford to pay, don't worry about it - come along anyway. If you can afford to pay, then please pay what you can - if you can afford to be generous, you allow me to be generous too.
It is a really imprecise science, but I aim for a mix of 'hidden gems' - books you wouldn't otherwise read, or perhaps even know of. They are never new books, they are usually by underrepresented writers, they are always great (in my opinion!).
Please check out (and sign up to) our substack. It's a website and also a weekly newsletter full of info about our walks and a chance to discover much more about our books: https://emilyswalkingbookclub.substack.com/
Hello! I'm Emily Rhodes - a writer and freelance journalist (for publications including the FT Weekend, Spectator, and Guardian). I believe passionately in the power of books to bring people together. I invented the whole idea of a walking book club in 2012, when I was a bookseller.
Please drop me a line using the contact function on Eventbrite, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.