A book discussion group, meeting the 2nd Sunday of each month from 6:30 to 8:30 PM, is seeking new members. In existence for more than twenty years, we typically read more fiction than non-fiction.
We select books by rotation - when it is your turn, you nominate three titles; our members then choose one from among them. Our sole requirement is that the book be available in paper.
We met in members' apartments or homes, generally in Berkeley and Oakland - we are Zooming once again. Typically 6 to 10 members come to each meeting. We are both male and female, ranging in age from ~20-80. (In a happier time we didn't do pot-lucks and insisted upon no smoking, colognes, perfumes, or fragrances). We don't take attendance; exams are multiple-choice open-book :-)
Here's what we're reading next in 2024:
In January Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami,
in February Nevada by Imogen Binnie
and in March They Called Us Exceptional by Prachi Gupta
Here's some of what we've read in the last few years:
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel by Shelby Van Pelt
The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue by Edna O'Brien
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Candy House by Jennifer Egan
Corrections in Ink by Keri Blakinger.
The Mortifications by Derek Palacio
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Severance by Ling Ma
Talk to Me by T.C. Boyle
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Circe by Madeline Miller,
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart,
Apeirogon by Colum McCann.
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Bartelby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha.
What You Have Heard is True: A memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forche
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
Notes from a Dead House by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson.
The Plague by Albert Camus,
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urea
The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham
The Conformist by Alberto Moravia
Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
There There by Tommy Orange
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Homegoing by Yaa Gyas1
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
LaRose by Louise Erdich
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Outline by Rachel Cusk
The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
The Door by Magda Szabo
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Day of the Locust - N West
Pompeii - M Beard
The Matisse Stories - A.S.Byatt
The Sense of an Ending - J Barnes
The Mystery of Edwin Drood - C Dickens
The Master and Margarita - M Bulgakov
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women - H Reisen
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Z N Thurston
Summertime - J.M. Coetzee
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - J Diaz
Lush Life - R Price
On Beauty - Z Smith
If you've read some of these titles and hated them, you'll be in good company.
If you've read some of these titles and loved them, you'll be in good company.
If you'd like to join us or wish more information, please write bjprice@cal.berkeley.edu
Hope you are interested.
Contact: bjprice@cal.berkeley.edu