BOOK CLUB
Connect and read with fellow alumni
Join in with thought provoking discussions as we discover the set texts together, moderated by a dedicated group leader who will encourage debate and suggest critical points for analysis.
The book we are currently reading, as chosen by book club members is Super Infinite by Katherine Rundell.

Goodreads says:
From standout scholar Katherine Rundell (St Catherine’s 2005 and Fellow of All Souls College), Super-Infinite presents a sparkling and very modern biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death.
Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing.
In his myriad lives he was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a sixteen-year old girl without her father's consent; struggled to feed a family of ten children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love.
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Are you an alumni author?
If you have written a book which has been published in the last 12 months or is about to be released, and it is available to purchase from Blackwell's bookshop, you can email the editor of QUAD news to consider it for review on our QUAD website. Our editorial selection rests on book appealing to the broadest alumni audience. Please email Richard Lofthouse with the following information:
- Your full name
- Oxford Number (or college/year of matriculation)
- Title and description of book
- Date of publication
- ISBN
- Link to book on Blackwell's website
Book Club FAQs
You will need either to buy, borrow or download a copy of the texts we select as a group. Readers are responsible for sourcing the texts themselves.
We’ll read a book every two months. If you have on average 30 minutes a week to read you should be fine. There is no required level of participation in group discussions; if don’t have time to read one of the books that's okay. The goal of the club is to make connections with other alumni through reading, so please take it at your own pace.
No, the book club will be entirely online. The advantage of this is that alumni living all over the world can participate, meaning we will get diverse perspectives on the texts we read.
There is no limit to the number of people who can join the book club; the more the merrier!
Participation is free for Oxford alumni. Readers are responsible for buying, borrowing or downloading the texts we read.
Our book club will have a dedicated moderator who manages the forum where discussions occur online. The moderator will pose questions to the group, share relevant articles, and facilitate conversation about topics in the book. Members will be encouraged to post and share as well. This format allows for ongoing conversation and makes it easy for alumni to connect with each other.
Feel free to send an email to enquiries@alumni.ox.ac.uk and we'd be happy to help.