Upcoming Meetings

All at 7:00PM, usually on the first Monday of the month. For now, we have "hybrid" meetings, meaning you can attend at the Robbins Library or via Zoom.

(check our Facebook Group for info about the next title, general book-related chatting,  etc.)

Schedule for 2023 

Mon, Jan 2: The Things We Cannot Say; Kelly Rimmer

Mon, Feb 6: A Tale for the Time Being; Ruth Ozeki

Mon, Mar 6: Evicted: poverty and profit in the American city; Matthew Desmond

Mon, Apr 3: Hamnet; Maggie O’Farrell

Mon, May 1: River of Doubt; Candice Millard

Mon, Jun 5: Harlem Shuffle; Colson Whitehead

Mon, Jul 10: Little Fires Everywhere; Celeste Ng (2nd Monday)

Mon, Aug 7: They Called Us Enemy; George Takei

Mon, Sep 11: The Gift of Rain; Tan Twan Eng (2nd Monday)

Mon, Oct 2: Age of Innocence; Edith Wharton

Mon, Nov 6: Bad Blood: secrets and lies in a Silicon Valley startup; John Carreyrou

Mon, Dec 4:  On Beauty; Zadie Smith

Mon, Jan 8, 2024: The Worst Hard Times; Timothy Egan (2nd Monday)

About the Robbins Library Book Discussion Group

We read both fiction and non-fiction.  We select a list of books in the fall to read during the following year from nominations by Book Group members.  A sufficient quantity of each month's book selection is reserved by the library system and made available to Book Group members to check out a month in advance of the meeting. In order to have a large amount of books available we tend to select either "classics" or books that were very popular several years ago to ensure that the Minuteman Library system has  enough copies of the title available for us.  

We invite new members to join us at any meeting (it is not required that you have read the book for that month). 

This web site is "unofficial" and is not operated by the Robbins Library. 

History

The Robbins Library Book Discussion Group was founded in 1994 by library volunteer Peter Glass, with support from the Robbins Library.  This group has been meeting monthly ever since. In 1996 Ann Honeycutt took over the role of volunteer facilitator (until her departure in 2015). Since then, Therese Henderson has been leading the group. We are the longest-running book group at the Robbins Library.  

What books do we read?

We read all kinds of books, with no one specialty or genre.  We read a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, as you can see under the “Recently Read” section on this page.  Most of the books chosen by our book selection committee for each year come from nominations by our members, so the books represent the wide interests of everyone in the group.  If you would like to nominate a book, please click on the link on this page.

 Because we are a library group, we select books with sufficient copies throughout the Minuteman Library network (to ensure that no one ever needs to purchase a book to participate).  Because of that limitation, our books are ones from the recent past rather than books that are currently in high demand or on waitlists, and sometimes we read older "classics."  

Useful Links & Info

To contact the Robbins Library visit: https://www.robbinslibrary.org/ 

• Robbins Library Book Groups:  https://www.robbinslibrary.org/services/book-film-groups/

• Robbins Library Events: https://www.robbinslibrary.org/events/ 

To visit our Facebook Group (for announcements and chat between meetings): https://www.facebook.com/groups/212703859877372/

Click here to Nominate Books for our Reading List! 

See books already nominated (spreadsheet format)

Extra materials about the books (by year)

Books recently read by this group:

• 2022

  • Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

  •  I Am Malala; Malala Yousefzai

  • The Count of Monte Cristo (first volume ch 1 - 27); Alexandre Dumas

  • Please Look After Mom; Kyung Seok Shin

  • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; Stephen King

  • The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry; Gabrielle Zevin

  • Deep Down Dark; Hector Tobar

  • God of Small Things; Arundhati Roy

  • A Kind of Freedom; Margaret Sexton  

  • The Tiger's Wife; Tea Obreht

  • This Tender Land; William Kent Krueger

  • Klara and the Sun; Kazuo Ishiguru

• 2021 

  • An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

  • The Long Flight Home by Alan Hlad

  • The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

  • Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

  • Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

  • The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

  • The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

  • Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

  • The Library Book by Susan Orlean

  • Weather by Jenny Offill

  • Runaway by Alice Munro

  • The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall

View list of books previously read by this group (1994-2022):

Books previously read - sorted by year read [PDF]

Books previously read - sorted by title [PDF]

Our Meetings  

   Note: starting in Spring 2020 all meetings are now being held via Zoom. In addition, we are now able to participate by attending in-person at the Robbins Library, typically in the 4th Floor Conference Room.

    Most meetings are on the first Monday of the month.

   Meetings begin at 7:00PM

   Zoom links are sent out via e-mail, usually a day or two before the meeting.