2023 Book Club Roundup

(Written by Karen Bardsley for club annual report 2023)

As autumn arrives and a new Smith term begins, it seems a good time to look back on another year of the EBSC’s Book Club. We have been going for twenty-nine years now, but we can still adapt to the times.  We started out the year with a series of hybrid meetings, where a few of us gathered in person and the rest joined in by Zoom. After a while, however, the technical difficulties and efforts involved proved too much, and we now alternate between Zoom meetings and in-person gatherings.  

Our reading list still demonstrates the same breadth and variety of interests. Our selections were evenly split between works of fiction and non-fiction. By our November meeting, we will have read four novels, a collection of short stories, two collections of essays, a memoir, and two accounts of epic, life-changing journeys. Of these titles, half were written by people of color, and more than half by women.  

This year’s classic novel by a female author was Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s harrowing tale of vengeance and thwarted love. However, some might say our summer “beach” read was also a classic: Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. We delved into the lives of animals, with Lawrence Anthony’s The Elephant Whisperer, and the fascinating world of plants, with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. We were impressed by a Smith student’s impressive debut novel (Leila Mottley’s Nightcrawling), and not quite so impressed by this year’s Smith Reads selection (Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights). As the year draws to a close we will expand our horizons with the story of one young boy’s solo journey to the United States from El Salvador (Javier Zamora’s Solito) and the tale of a sixty-three-year-old woman’s journey across America on horseback (Elizabeth Letts’ The Ride of Her Life).

Of course, our book club doesn’t just travel in our armchairs. We always plan at least one outing a year. This June we went to Woodminster Amphitheater in Oakland to see the musical Gypsy with other members of the East Bay Smith Club. We met beforehand for a lovely potluck picnic on the terraces overlooking Oakland and the Bay, before settling in our seats for the iconic musical. It was a fun night of music, dance, and exclamations of “so that’s where that song is from.”

Hopefully, we will have another in-person gathering this December for our annual poetry night. A few years ago, we read a book of poems for one of our monthly meetings. For several of us, it had been years since we had taken the time to read and discuss poetry. That seemed a shame, and so our poetry night tradition was born! For this meeting each person brings a poem to read to the group.  We briefly discuss each work and then move on. We have found that this smorgasbord of short pieces is a wonderful way to kick off the holiday season.