On Tuesday, July 8, at 2 pm, we will be discussing In The Distance by Hernán Díaz. This meeting takes place on the second Tuesday of the month, as usual.

To RSVP, please email tonilin@aol.com. RSVP, please. The meeting will take place virtually. You will be sent the link upon RSVP.

We have put together the schedule below for future reading. Comments are welcome.

July 2025 — In the Distance by Hernan Diaz (born in Buenos Aires, writes in English, lives in USA).  Pp 272. NYT headline, “A Debut Novel. A Tiny Press. A Pulitzer Finalist. “In the Distance,” is a weird western about a lonely Swede traveling America’s frontier in the 1800s.

August 2025 — Stone Yard Devotional, literary fiction, 2023, 320 pp, Goodreads, 3.76.  A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be ‘good’, from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

“Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout.” THE GUARDIAN UK

September 2025 — The Order of Time by Carlo Reveli – non-fiction.  2017.  Beautifully written by a physicist, which explains quantum physics of time. – Goodreads 4.1, 224 pp, 2017.  Fortified with quotations from Proust, pp 224. Anaximander and the Grateful Dead (Rovelli has a hippyish past), the book continues a tradition of jargon-free scientific writing from Galileo to Darwin that disappeared in the academic specialisation of the last century.

October 2025 — The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, Goodreads 4.23, 1923, 127 pp.  Gibran is one of the few writers out there who were unproblematic and who mainly kept to himself. The fact that he arrived as an immigrant in America not speaking any English, only for him to flourish in the arts and later write one of the most important books in the last decades. I love that he took pride of his Lebanese heritage and his Arabic language.

November 2025 — Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann,  400 pages.  Goodreads 4.14, 2017. What an incredible period in Oklahoma history. The author captures an era of lawlessness and greed in frontier life and shares a piece of history that almost remained untold. A cautionary tale demonstrating the level of greed and heartlessness that can sometimes take hold in people’s hearts. A shameful tale of what happened to the Osage Indians, once the richest people in America.

December 2025 —  West by Carys Davies, 2018, Goodreads 3.71, 160 pp.     Stunning debut novel (The Guardian). One of the most unsettling elements is Davies’s vein of dark, gleaming humour. Her writing manages the odd feat of seeming both timeless and historically specific, and her comedy is no exception.

January 2026 — We Should Not Be Friends by Will Schwalbe [Memoir], 336 pp., 2023. “An unexpected page-turner that may inspire readers to reach out to old friends. This delicate memoir tracks their intermittent friendship, from initiation into one of Yale’s secret societies to thirty-five-year college reunion. Schwalbe overcomes the perspectival limitations of memoir-writing by allowing himself access to his friend’s thoughts, notably in rhapsodic contemplations of the sea surrounding the Bahamian island where Maxey ultimately finds purpose.” —The New Yorker

February 2026 —  Horse by Geraldine Brooks, historical fiction, 2022, Goodreads 4.26, 400 pp.   “[A] sweeping tale . . . fluid, masterful storytelling … [Brooks] writes about our present in such a way that the tangled roots of history, just beneath the story, are both subtle and undeniable … Horse is a reminder of the simple, primal power an author can summon by creating characters readers care about and telling a story about them—the same power that so terrifies the people so desperately trying to get Toni Morrison banned from their children’s reading lists.”— Maggie Shipstead, The Washington Post

March 2026 — Knowing What We Know by Simon Winchester, nonfiction,  Goodreads 3.83, 423 pp.  2023.  “A delightful compendium of the kind of facts you immediately want to share with anyone you encounter . . . . Simon Winchester has firmly earned his place in history . . . as a promulgator of knowledge of every variety, perhaps the last of the famous explorers who crisscrossed the now-vanished British Empire and reported what they found to an astonished world.”  — New York Times

From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is award winning writer Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.

April 2025 — Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, 2014, 297 pages, A literary novel. Alex read this book in one day. The story grabbed her and took her on a sweet, sad journey of one family. Well written from start to finish, it unfolds nicely so you truly understand each person and relationship. The story involves family dynamics, teenager’s angst, relationships, race and makes you realize how hard it is to be different from everyone around you.

On Tuesday, April 8, at 2 pm we will be discussing The Wager:  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. This meeting is on the second Tuesday of the month, as usual.

To RSVP, please email tonilin@aol.com. The meeting will take place in person, on Zoom or Google Meet. You will be sent the link upon RSVP.

The books we plan to read in future months are listed below. Suggestions are encouraged. The May book was just added.

Future reads:

April

The Wager:  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann.   Non-fiction, 263 pages.  2023.  #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

May

Black Like Me by journalist John Howard Griffin. Non-fiction, 1961, 224 pp, recounts his journey in the Deep South of the United States, at a time when African-Americans lived under racial segregation.

On Tuesday, February 11, at 2 pm we will be discussing James by Percival Everett. This meeting is on the second Tuesday of the month, as usual.

To RSVP, please email tonilin@aol.com. The meeting will take place on Zoom or Google Meet. You will be sent the link upon RSVP.

The books we plan to read in future months are listed below. Suggestions are encouraged.

Future reads:

February

James by Percival Everett – 4.57 Goodreads rating – historical fiction – pp 303, 2024.  A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.  Everett is a preeminent American author, and “James” is his sly response to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The title immediately suggests what he is up to with this subversive revision. In these pages, the enslaved man known as Jim can finally declare: “I will not let this condition define me. … My name became my own.” While Everett flashes his own brand of humor, the novel gathers speed and terror like a swelling storm. Its conclusion is equally shocking and exhilarating.

March

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck.  Fiction, translated from German, 336 pages. 2023
“Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fueled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.

From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history”

April

The Wager:  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann.   Non-fiction, 263 pages.  2023.  #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on The Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.