Town Read for Adults & Children
We asked people to vote for the book they’d like to read! As part of Maidenhead’s Big Read we wanted to encourage more people to pick up a book and bring the community together. We, with help from the Library Service, selected six titles for adults and six titles for children for people to choose from.
Copies of the book that got the most votes were made available at libraries across Maidenhead (Central, Boyne Grove, Cox Green) for people to pick up free of charge and get reading! All we asked people to do was to pass the book onto someone else once they were finished with it and encourage them to read it.
The title for adults and children are shown below.
Copies of the book that got the most votes were made available at libraries across Maidenhead (Central, Boyne Grove, Cox Green) for people to pick up free of charge and get reading! All we asked people to do was to pass the book onto someone else once they were finished with it and encourage them to read it.
The title for adults and children are shown below.
Adult Book List
RUNNING LIFE: Kelly Holmes
Divided into three sections, Mindset, Fitness and Nutrition, this book will teach you how to make positive changes to your life and empower yourself, with each chapter featuring numerous tips from Dame Kelly. Change your mindset to reach emotional wellbeing with easy-to-follow mindfulness exercises, keep your body strong with running, strength and flexibility exercises, and learn which foods best nourish your body with 5 ways to improve the way you eat. 
MAN AND BOY: Tony Parsons
A fabulously engaging and exciting novel about a man who has to learn about life and love the hard way .Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one moment of madness, he chucks it all away .Man and Boy is the story of how he comes to terms with his life and achieves a degree of self-respect, bringing up his son alone and, gradually, learning what words like love and family really mean. It is very well written, pacy, funny, and heart-breakingly moving. 
NORMAL PEOPLE: Sally Rooney
Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life. |
UP: My Life's Journey to the top of Everest: Ben Fogle
In April 2018, seasoned adventurer Ben Fogle and Olympic cycling gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, along with mountaineer Kenton Cool, took on their most exhausting challenge yet – climbing Everest for the British Red Cross to highlight the environmental challenges mountains face. It would be harrowing and exhilarating in equal measure as they walked the fine line between life and death 8,000 metres above sea level. For Ben, the seven-week expedition into the death zone was to become the adventure of a lifetime, as well as a humbling and enlightening journey. Part memoir, part thrilling adventure, Ben and Marina’s account of his ascent to the roof of the world is told with their signature humour and warmth, as well as with profound compassion. 
THE GREEN MILE: Stephen King
The Green Mile: those who walk it do not return, because at the end of that walk is the room in which sits Cold Mountain penitentiary's electric chair. In 1932 the newest resident on death row is John Coffey, a giant black man convicted of the brutal murder of two little girls. But nothing is as it seems with John Coffey, and around him unfolds a bizarre and horrifying story. Evil murderer or holy innocent - whichever he is - Coffey has strange powers which may yet offer salvation to others, even if they can do nothing to save him. 
BIG LITTLE LIES: Liane Moriarty
Single mum Jane has just moved to town. She's got her little boy in tow - plus a secret she's been carrying for five years. On the first day of the school run she meets Madeline - a force to be reckoned with, who remembers everything and forgives no one - and Celeste, the kind beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare, but is inexplicably ill at ease. They both take Jane under their wing - while careful to keep their own secrets under wraps. But a minor incident involving the children of all three women rapidly escalates: playground whispers become spiteful rumours until no one can tell the truth from the lies. |
Childrens' Book List
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again: Frank Cottrell Boyce When the Tooting family find a vast abandoned engine and fit it to their camper van, they have no idea of the adventure that lies ahead. The engine used to belong to an extraordinary flying car - and it wants to be back on the road again . . . fast!
The Tootings can haul on the steering wheel and pull the handbrake as hard as they like, but their camper van now has a mind of her own. It's not long before they're hurtling along on a turbocharged chase as Chitty tracks down her long-lost bodywork. But there are sinister forces at work too. When it comes to a car as special as Chitty, everybody wants a piece of her... 
MY HEAD TEACHER IS A VAMPIRE RAT: Pamela Butchart
The new head teacher at Izzy's school must be a vampire! After all, he wears a cape, hates garlic and turns bright red in the sunlight. Izzy and her friends set out to uncover the truth as their imaginations get the better of them in this very funny story. 
THE NOTHING TO SEE HERE HOTEL: Steven Butler
A hotel for magical creatures, where weird is normal for Frankie Banister and his parents who run the hotel. When a goblin messenger arrives at The Nothing to See Here Hotel, announcing the imminent arrival of the goblin prince Grogbah, Frankie and his family rush into action to get ready for their important guest. But it soon becomes obvious that the Banister family are going to have their work cut out with the demanding prince and his never-ending entourage, especially when it turns out the rude little prince is hiding a secret... |
MEERKAT MADNESS: Ian Whybrow
Meerkat Madness is the story of a burrow of meerkat pups and their eccentric babysitter, Uncle Fearless who once travelled to the Blah-Blah camp at the edge of the desert. Truth be told, Uncle is a bit of a show-off but the pups love his colourful stories even if they don’t really believe them. But then they find a mysterious object buried in the sand and it isn’t long before they are caught up in a daring adventure of their own! 
THE TWITS: Roald Dahl
Mr Twit is a foul and smelly man with bits of cornflake and sardine in his beard. Mrs Twit is a horrible old hag with a glass eye. Together they make the nastiest couple you could ever hope not meet. Down in their garden, the Twits keep Muggle-Wump the monkey and his family locked in a cage. But not for much longer, because the monkeys are planning to trick the terrible Twits, once and for all . . . 
THE POLAR BEAR EXPLORER’S CLUB: Alex Bell
It sounded like a respectable and worthy enough death for an explorer - tumbling from an ice bridge to be impaled upon a mammoth tusk - but Stella really, really didn't want that to happen, just the same. Join Stella Starflake Pearl and her three fellow explorers as they trek across the snowy Icelands and come face-to-face with frost fairies, snow queens, outlaw hideouts, unicorns, pygmy dinosaurs and carnivorous cabbages. When Stella and three other junior explorers get separated from their expedition can they cross the frozen wilderness and live to tell the tale? |