• Please bring a piece of paper with a short excerpt of at least ten words, and not more than twenty-five, from a book you really like. This will be used in an icebreaker.

• Aim for something funny or inspiring and/or where something happens, or something just happened.

• If you forget to bring one, youll have to use the spares that are available, and they won't reflect your taste as much as one that you pick out yourself.

You should have all the spares be excerpts from the Twilight series and harlequin romance novels (with the nauty bits censored). That'll teach 'em to forget to bring something!

Or have the excerpt be Beowulf in Old English. Or even a bit of Canterbury Tales in Middle English.

All excellent ideas, Becky, but Barry and I just spent an hour writing down excerpts from books we like.

Still, maybe we'll need more. I really like the Beowulf in Old English option.