The Beacon Book Club: Hard at Work

Join us for the Beacon Book Club. October’s theme is ‘Hard at Work’.

The Beacon Book club will be an informal, friendly group of likeminded people who want to share their passion for reading and to discover new favourite books and make new friends.

Most of the suggested reading can be found at or ordered through the Cumberland Library Service as print books, e-books or audiobooks but we also encourage you to take the theme and browse through the library shelves, charity shops and independent booksellers to find something unexpected.

October’s Suggested Reading List: “Hard at Work”.

Working Lives by David Hall.

A heavy-weight book, available from Cumberland Libraries.

An insightful and wide-ranging collection of spoken-word testimonies, describing life working in and alongside the mills, mines and foundries of industrial Northern England.  Carefully curated into segments reflecting how the rise and fall of these industries impacted on communities, employability and life chances, the format is both engaging and informative.  

Poems of the Pits: The Reflections of John W. Skelly.

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

A collection of moving and thought-provoking poems written and presented by this local mining man, that convey in rhythm and rhyme the actuality of Pit work in and around Whitehaven. Includes inserts of factual information for context.

Cumbrian Women Remember: Lake District Life in the Early 1900s, by June Thistlethwaite.

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

A totally mesmerising account of the sheer hard work undertaken by women across the Fells, around the Lakes and in the centres of industry all across Cumbria, in both paid and unpaid capacity. How their hopes and dreams were regularly set aside for the greater good of family and community, revealing a stoic acceptance that, whatever the circumstance, “well, that was that.”

Sellafield Stories, Edited by Hunter Davies. 

Available from Cumberland Libraries and Michael Moon Books.

A chronology of the transformation from Windscale Ridge to the Sellafield Nuclear Disposal facility we know today, described in un-edited extracts from the largest Oral History project in the UK. A series of no-holds-barred thoughts and reflections from local people connected to the site through their labour, their career or by simple geography. A fascinating insight about a place so integral to this area yet significant around the world.

Lab Rats: Why Modern Work makes People Miserable,

by Dan Lyons.

Available from Cumberland Libraries.

This book, described variously as “laugh out loud funny” and “a caustic critique of modern recruitment and employment” offers a completely different take on modern working life. If the terms ‘blue-sky thinking,’ ‘hot-desking’ and ‘Lego Serious Play’ as an enforced ‘happy-place activity’ ring any bells, then this book is a Must Read as it tears into the Unicorn Company ethos, seeking to replace it with Zebras United as a re-humanising experience. An enjoyable eye-opener!