2025 Book Club Roundup

(Written by Karen Bardsley for club annual report 2025)

The EBSC’s Book Club is in its thirty-first year, and we are still going strong. In 2025, we’ve had meetings every month, including both on-line gatherings and in-person events.  By the end of the year, we will have read ten books, eight of which were authored by women. Our six novels include a mystery, two works of science fiction, a historical novel inspired by the life of Shakespeare’s wife, a mystical odyssey set in Great Depression era America, and a modern re-imagining of a classic work by Charles Dickens.

Our four non-fiction selections were all memoirs, including three works by women of color. One of these was this year’s Smith Reads book: Loretta J. Ross’s Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel, a work that is both a memoir and a guide to fostering communication and cooperation across various political and cultural divides.

Fittingly, our selection for the following month was written by a woman who devoted her professional career to international cooperation and development. In September, Betsy White, a book club member, kindly invited us to her home to discuss her book: Balancing Act: Mountains, Family, and Career. It was lovely to talk about her memoir while surrounded by souvenirs of her many adventures in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. As this was such a special book club meeting, we set up a Zoom feed so that members who could not make it to Berkeley were able to join in the discussion.

We celebrated the creativity of another of our members in June at the EBSC’s Annual Summer Theater Outing. Just like last year, we went to Orinda’s Community Park for picnic followed by an outside performance of an Agatha Christie play starring book club member Patricia Wright. This time it was the classic Hercule Poirot mystery Murder on the Orient Express. The play’s staging was clever, the acting was top notch, and the performance was very entertaining.

Before the end of the year, we have more books to discuss, including Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet in October and Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize winning novel Orbital in November. In December, we will celebrate the end of another year of literary adventures with our Annual Poetry Night. This is our traditional holiday salute to the spoken word.   Instead of having an assigned reading, everyone is encouraged to bring a poem to read to the group.