Book Club 2025/26

This has been another successful year for the English language book club at Gimnazija Vič. Although there has been a loosely organised group like this for a long time, it is only in the past few years that it has been properly structured and it's great to see that the efforts made in this regard are definitely worthwhile.

Through the school year, our group of dedicated readers met regularly on Tuesday afternoons for our meetings. As well as discussing our focus novels for the year, the meetings allowed students to put forward recommendations based on what they had enjoyed reading in their free time. This was especially important for others to get useful suggestions as to what to add to their future reading lists. The conversations often drifted into unexpected territory with topics like unusual things to use as bookmarks and the best snacks to enjoy while reading your book providing some lively detours.

At the start of every year, the book club's mentors from our English department, Blanka Klobučar and Tim Gallagher, choose what will be the set of books for us all to read together and discuss in greater detail. The goal of the group is to encourage people to read something that they might not usually choose. With that in mind, the idea is to go for a range of different genres and to choose authors who might not be so well known among Slovenian teenagers.

For this year, the books were The 392 by Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Facial Justice by L. P. Hartley, and Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor.

The great thing about the group is that, whether or not students particularly liked the novel, they definitely had plenty to say regarding different characteristics and themes which appeared through the books. This led to some heated debates and conversations which lasted long into the afternoons.

We would like to thank the group who attended through this year. It was especially heartening to see so many joining us from the first-year generation who chose us as one of their main after-school activities when they joined us in September.

Discussions are already underway as to what next year's books will be and how the group's meetings will evolve to involve even more potential for interaction. We look forward to welcoming an even bigger group of readers to join us in the year ahead.