Men's Book Club in UK Wins "Best Read" Prize
The Racketeers are a group of friends in Manchester England who meet once a month in a pub to talk about books and hoist a few. They beat 700 other book clubs in the UK to be named the Best Read Book Club in Britain by Penguin UK. Chris Chilton, 57, formed the group after being denied membership in his wife's book club, which is women only. Since its inception, the eight-member Racketeers have read everyone from Donna Tart to Nagib Mahfouz to Dostoyevsky. Their unconventional meeting place caught the attention of the panel at Penguin UK, which also admired the list of books they had read. Chilton says the group's discussions are good-naturedly adversarial, which is part of the appeal for the members. Each member wins 200 pounds and a weekend trip to the Edinburgh Book Festival.