Books Past
Here you can see the books we have discussed since we started meeting.
The first section spans 2018 to the present. The numbers in front of the title indicate month and year. Click on a title to learn more about the book.
The second section spans books we discussed from July 2015 through 2017.
The third section includes books we discussed from 2011 through June 2015.
20-08: The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks
20-07: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
20-05: The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
20-04: Working by Robert A. Caro
20-03: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
20-01: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
19-12: For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich
19-11: The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers
19-10: The Overstory by Richard Powers
19-09: The Library Book by Susan Orlean
19-07: Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
19-06: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
19-05: Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
19-04: Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
19-03: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
19-02: Fear by Bob Woodward; Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff; A Higher Loyalty by James Comey
19-01: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
18-12: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
18-11: A History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
18-10: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker
18-09: Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
18-08: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
18-06: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
18-05: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
18-04: The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
December 2017
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
(Fiction)
Amazon: A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a gripping novel about a long-unsolved crime in a small North Dakota town and how, years later, the consequences are still being felt by the community and a nearby Native American reservation.
"Though generations have passed, the town of Pluto continues to be haunted by the murder of a farm family. Evelina Harp—part Ojibwe, part white—is an ambitious young girl whose grandfather, a repository of family and tribal history, harbors knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth."
Presenter: Shirley
Wednesday, December 6 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
November 2017
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
(non-fiction)
from Amazon - Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? … as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.
Presenter: Toni
Wednesday, November 1 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
October 2017
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
(fiction)
The generations of family who follow from two sisters: one sold into slavery and shipped to America and the other married to a British slaver and remaining in Ghana. Lots of awards and recommendations.
Presenter: Sharon
Wednesday, October 4 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
September 2017
Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice by Adam Benforado
(non-fiction)
A child is gunned down by a police officer; an investigator ignores critical clues in a case; an innocent man confesses to a crime he did not commit; a jury acquits a killer. The evidence is all around us: Our system of justice is fundamentally broken.
But it’s not for the reasons we tend to think, as law professor Adam Benforado argues in this eye-opening, galvanizing book. Even if the system operated exactly as it was designed to, we would still end up with wrongful convictions, trampled rights, and unequal treatment. This is because the roots of injustice lie not inside the dark hearts of racist police officers or dishonest prosecutors, but within the minds of each and every one of us.
A science based look at our criminal system weaving together the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience with real-world stories of injustice.
Adam Benforado presents innovative ways to improve the system.
Presenter: Terry
Wednesday, September 6 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
August 2017
Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
(fiction)
American woman meets & marries Indian man while they're in med school together. Eventually, she learns she can't have children. They adopt a child from India. Fascinating comparison of American and Indian cultures as well as the heartbreak of having to give up a child at birth.
Presenter: Verna
Wednesday, August 2 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
July 2017
Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Hochschild
(non-fiction)
Berkeley Sociologist studying political conservatives in Louisiana bayou country tries to explain why they vote against what liberals think is in their best interest.
Presenter: Terry
Wednesday, July 5 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
June 2017
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
***** The May meeting was canceled due to a family emergency so all selected books have been pushed out a month *****
(fiction)
Ove is the quintessential angry old man next door. An isolated retiree with strict principles and a short fuse, who spends his days enforcing block association rules that only he cares about, and visiting his wife’s grave, Ove has given up on life. Enter a boisterous young family next door who accidentally flattens Ove’s mailbox while moving in and earning his special brand of ire. Yet from this inauspicious beginning an unlikely friendship forms and we come to understand Ove’s past happiness and heartbreaks. What emerges is a heartwarming tale of unreliable first impressions and the gentle reminder that life is sweeter when it's shared.
Also a movie -- playing now.
One of Sweden's biggest locally-produced box office hits ever, director Hannes Holm finds the beating heart of his source material and Swedish star Rolf Lassgård, whose performance won him the Best Actor award at the 2016 Seattle International Film Festival, affectingly embodies the lovable curmudgeon Ove.
Presenter: Verna
Wednesday, May 3 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
May 2017
Reading group meeting canceled due to a family emergency.
April 2017
Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein
(non-fiction)
From Terry:
Got my highest rating; seems to be essential information to understand the world today. The new sexual landscape girls face in the post-princess stage. the ways in which porn and all its sexual myths have seeped into young people’s lives, unfortunate realities surrounding assault. Finishes with great examples of how things can change.
Presenter: Terry
Wednesday, April 5 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
March 2017
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman
(non-fiction)
Since “A Distant Mirror” is such a long book, we’ll divide it up. Everyone is going to read the first three chapters and the last chapter. Then each person chooses three middle chapters to read and “report on” to the group. What we want for this “reporting” is just a bit of information on what the chapters are about and a related question raised for discussion.
Janet has the list of which people have which chapters so if you do not yet have your chapters, please contact her to choose your chapters.
from Amazon:
Barbara W. Tuchman—the acclaimed author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Guns of August—once again marshals her gift for character, history, and sparkling prose to compose an astonishing portrait of medieval Europe.
The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.”
Presenter: Janet
Wednesday, March 1 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
February 2017
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
(fiction)
from Amazon:
Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
Presenter: Barbara
Wednesday, February 1 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
January 2017
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
(fiction)
from Amazon:
Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the city's Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects), a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it.
New York City, 1957: The only known surviving work of Sara de Vos, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, Marty de Groot, a descendant of the original owner. It is a beautiful but comfortless landscape. The lawyer's marriage is prominent but comfortless, too. When a struggling art history grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to forge the painting for a dubious art dealer, she finds herself entangled with its owner in ways no one could predict.
Sydney, 2000: Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley is mounting an exhibition in her field of specialization: female painters of the Dutch Golden Age. When it becomes apparent that both the original At the Edge of a Wood and her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably.
Presenter: Janet
Wednesday, January 4 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
December 2016
All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister
(non-fiction)
from Amazon:
In 2009, the award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister started All the Single Ladies—a book she thought would be a work of contemporary journalism—about the twenty-first century phenomenon of the American single woman. It was the year the proportion of American women who were married dropped below fifty percent; and the median age of first marriages, which had remained between twenty and twenty-two years old for nearly a century (1890–1980), had risen dramatically to twenty-seven.
But over the course of her vast research and more than a hundred interviews with academics and social scientists and prominent single women, Traister discovered a startling truth: the phenomenon of the single woman in America is not a new one. And historically, when women were given options beyond early heterosexual marriage, the results were massive social change—temperance, abolition, secondary education, and more.
Presenter: Barbara
Wednesday, December 7 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
November 2016
Love & Treasure by Ayelet Waldman
(fiction)
This is a wonderful story that goes back and forth between several time periods and places (Maine 2013; Salzburg 1945-46; Budapest and Israel 2013, and Budapest 1913). The characters are real and the plot is compelling.
The story is woven around the true history of the Hungarian Gold Train, captured by American soldiers in 1945, which contained treasures, heirlooms and household goods stolen from Jews during World War II.
Presenter: Patti
Wednesday, November 2 at 7:30pm at Sharon's house (note the change in venue)
October 2016
The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
(non-fiction)
The author, a female Norwegian journalist, who was accepted into a Kabul family for three months, writes a first person narrative about Afghan gender roles, education, politics, religion, and culture.
Within the context of his society, bookseller Khan is an enlightened and liberal man; he reads widely and believes in freedom of thought and speech. But he is a product of a highly conservative society and a despot who forces his family to bind to his will.
Presenter: Janice
Wednesday, October 5 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
September 2016
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
(fiction)
From Goodreads: From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career--a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family's life.
"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.
Presenter: Barbara
Wednesday, September 7 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
August 2016
A Bicycle Built for Two Billion by Jamie Bianchini
(Non-fiction)
After living too grandly and plunging to rock bottom, the author decided to ride a tandem bike solo around the world and invite people that he met along the way to ride part of the journey with him. Video clip mentions various issues and how those he met along the way helped him (when his bike and money were stolen, when he got sick, when he didn't have food or a place to stay) and how he gave back -- helped provide a clean water source to one community, helped one man build a school, donated bikes to kids in Cape Town, etc.
Presenter: Toni
Wednesday, August 3 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
July 2016
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
(fiction)
From Goodreads: An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
Presenter: Sharon
Wednesday, July 6 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
June 2016
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
(Fiction)
Winner of the Man Booker Prize
The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-selling author of popular history, lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life still glow in her fading consciousness, but she imagines writing a history of the world. Instead, Moon Tiger is her own history, the life of a strong, independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and friends. At its center — forever frozen in time, the still point of her turning world — is the cruelly truncated affair with Tom, a British tank commander whom Claudia knew as a reporter in Egypt during World War II.
Presenter: Janet
Wednesday, June 1 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
May 2016
Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie
(Fiction)
A historical novel about the invention of the printing press. An interesting read for those of us who love the printed word.
Presenter: Sharon
Wednesday, May 4 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
April 2016
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
(Non-fiction)
National Book Award, Named one of 10 Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly. Written as a message, a warning even, by Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son as to what to expect in life – from the street, from the police, from the world. It is, in short, a sketch (150 pages long) of what it is to be black and American today.(Guardian)
Presenter: Terry
Wednesday, April 6 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
March 2016
My Brilliant Friend by Elana Ferrante
(Fiction)
Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein. This book is the first of a quartet.
from Goodreads – A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship.
The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists, the unforgettable Elena and Lila.
Ferrante is the author of three previous works of critically acclaimed fiction: The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, and The Lost Daughter. With this novel, the first in a trilogy [the fourth in the series has just been published], she proves herself to be one of Italy’s great storytellers. She has given her readers a masterfully plotted page-turner, abundant and generous in its narrative details and characterizations, that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight her many fans and win new readers to her fiction.
Presenter: Janet
Wednesday, Mar 2 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
February 2016
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
(Fiction)
Brief synopsis: Under the threat of Hitler's rise to power, a young Polish woman's parents send her to live with an aunt and uncle in San Francisco. Alma Belasco falls in love with their young Japanese gardener, Ichimei. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, his family is assigned to Topaz, a Japanese internment camp in central Utah.
Allende, as she often does, picks up threads from the past and weaves them into the present. Alma now in a nursing home, begins receiving mysterious gifts. And, so forth… Allende's descriptions are rich and lush. I think she's a great story teller.
Presenter: Shirley
Wednesday, Feb 3 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
January 2016
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
(Fiction)
From Goodreads:
Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old friend in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.
Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but ...
Presenter: Lisa
Wednesday, Jan 6 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
December 2015
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony
(Non-Fiction)
Engrossing --- Couldn't put it down!!! Verna
Lawrence Anthony devoted his life to animal conservation, protecting the world's endangered species. Then he was asked to accept a herd of "rogue" wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. His common sense told him to refuse, but he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them.
In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom.
The Elephant Whisperer is a heartwarming, exciting, funny, and sometimes sad memoir of Anthony's experiences with these huge yet sympathetic creatures. Set against the background of life on an African game reserve, with unforgettable characters and exotic wildlife, Anthony's unrelenting efforts at animal protection and his remarkable connection with nature will inspire animal lovers and adventurous souls everywhere.
Presenter: Verna
Wednesday, Dec 2 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
November 2015
Orhan’s Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
(fiction)
In her extraordinary debut, Aline Ohanesian has created two remarkable characters—a young man ignorant of his family’s and his country’s past, and an old woman haunted by the toll the past has taken on her life.
Presenter: Anca
Wednesday, Nov 4 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
October 2015
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
(nonfiction)
In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.
Presenters: Terry & Sharon
Wednesday, Oct 7 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
September 2015
Night At The Fiestas by Kristen Valdez Quade
Fiction, short stories
Set in northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about growing up in a land shaped by love, loss and violence.
With intensity and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters defined by the desire to escape the past or else to plumb its depths. The deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. A young man discovers that his estranged father and a boa constrictor have been squatting in his grandmother’s empty house. A lonely retiree new to Santa Fe becomes obsessed with her housekeeper. One girl attempts to uncover the mystery of her cousin's violent past, while another young woman finds herself at an impasse when she is asked to hear her priest's confession.
Always hopeful, these stories chart the passions and obligations of family life, exploring themes of race, class, and coming-of-age, as Quade's characters protect, betray, wound, undermine, bolster, define, and, ultimately, save each other.
NOTE: Barbara has selected two of the stories for discussion (down from the three original).
1. Guesthouse;
2. Mohave Rats
Presenter: Barbara
Wednesday, Sept 2 at 7:30pm at Janet's house
August 2015
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
(fiction)
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.
This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
2004 Boeke Prize, won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year award and sold more than two million copies.[7] Haddon also was one of the winners of the 2004 Alex Awards.
Presenter: Patti
Wednesday, Aug 5 at 7:30pm at Sharon's
July 2015
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
(nonfiction)
. . . out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.
Presenter: Nancy
Wednesday, July 1 at 7:30pm at Sharon's
