English Readers Club
Join the informal group of English readers in Uitikon every second month on Thursdays at 19.30h. We discuss all sorts of books: bestsellers, biographies, classics, thrillers etc.. The group is moderated and the books are proposed by Heidi Kunz, a native speaker, English teacher and avid reader. Heidi is also a long standing member at the Uitikon library.
The books can be purchased at the library. No registration is needed and you do not have to comit to attend each session or to even have fully read the book - we will simply be delighted to welcome you to an interesting evening!
Meeting September 4, 2025, 7:30pm
Kristin Hannah: "The Women" (CHF 18.00)
'Women can be heroes, too'. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances "Frankie" McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California's idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the young men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war, as well as the unexpected trauma of coming home to a changed America. Frankie will also discover the true value of female friendship and the heartbreak that love can cause.
Meeting November 6, 2025, 7:30pm
Richard Powers: "Playground" (CHF 17.00)
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author of the Overstory
Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.
All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.
Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
