2024 Book Club Roundup

(Written by Karen Bardsley for club annual report 2024)

The East Bay Smith Club’s Book Club has been going for thirty years, and, in some respects, we are quite set in our ways. However, we are always willing to adapt with the times and to try new things. Since the pandemic, we have been alternating back and forth between Zoom meetings and in-person events. Each format has its advantages, so it made sense to keep them both.

Our reading list continues to be diverse and wide-ranging. In 2024, our choices were split pretty much equally between fiction and non-fiction. In addition, half of our authors were women and half were people of color. Our readings took us from Smith’s past, when we read a 1904 novel set at a fictionalized version of the college (Betty Wales, Freshman by Margaret Warde), to Smith’s future, when we read the Smith Reads selection (The Book of Delights by Ross Gay) along with the college’s incoming students. We continued our tradition of reading a classic novel by a female author with Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and we learned more about the history of our area with a local classic: Malcolm Margolin’s The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area.

In March, we celebrated the book club’s 30th “pearl” anniversary by reading John Steinbeck’s novella “The Pearl” and by wearing pearls as a tongue-in-cheek salute to Smith’s reputation in years past. The star of the night was Sherrill’s amazing cake, which was shaped like an open book. You can see a picture of the event (cake included) on the book club’s webpage.

In June, we had our annual summer theater outing, an event we organize with the East Bay Smith Club as a whole. This year was extra special, as one of our book club regulars, Pat Wright, was in the play: Agatha Christie’s "Spider’s Web". In conjunction with the event, we read Lucy’s Worsley’s recent biography of Agatha Christie, which we discussed at a pre-show tea in the park where the outdoor performance was held. It was a hot summer day in California, but sipping tea, eating scones, and talking about the life of Christie helped set the stage for murder and mayhem at an English manor.

Our final in-person event of the year was our Annual Poetry Night, which was on Thursday, December 13th. At this event, members brought a poem to read out loud. We discussed each piece briefly. It was a great way to discover new poets and new poems, and gave us a break from book club reading during the busy holiday season.