On Tuesday, February 13, at 2 pm we will be discussing Where’d You Go, Bernadette. This is the second Tuesday of the month, as usual. To RSVP, please email tonilin@aol.com.

You will be sent the Google Meet link or the physical address upon RSVP.

Suggestions for discussion in 2024 are welcome. Please send to tonilin@aol.com .

The list of the books for the beginning of 2024 is included below. The list has recently changed, so check it twice, please.

February — Where’d You Go, Bernadette – Maria Semple — 2013, 352 pp

“Divinely funny, many-faceted novel…leaves convention behind… The tightly constructed WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE is written in many formats-e-mails, letters, F.B.I. documents, correspondence with a psychiatrist and even an emergency-room bill for a run-in between Bernadette and Audrey. Yet these pieces are strung together so wittily that Ms. Semple’s storytelling is always front and center, in sharp focus. You could stop and pay attention to how apt each new format is, how rarely she repeats herself and how imaginatively she unveils every bit of information. But you would have to stop laughing first.”―Janet Maslin, The New York Times

A wild ride.

Utterly delightful

March —  Moral Hazards — Tim Martin — 2020, 354 pp

The author, Tim Martin, will be with us to discuss the book.  If you would like to buy a copy of the book, please let Toni know.

“A woman fights to protect the victims of sexual violence in the world’s largest refugee camp in Martin’s debut political thriller.  … Martin’s prose is precise and powerful throughout this novel. …The deftly constructed characters help to give life to these issues while also involving readers in their particular plights.

A well-crafted novel that’s both informative and dramatically satisfying.​”  Kirkus Review

April — The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth – 1986, verse – 320 pp

“The great California novel … , in verse (and why not?): The Golden Gate gives great joy.”—Gore Vidal

One of the most highly regarded novels of 1986, Vikram Seth’s story in verse made him a literary household name in both the United States and India. 

John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper.

“A splendid achievement, equally convincing in its exhilaration and its sadness.”—The New York Times

“Seth pulls off his feat with spirit, grace and great energy.”—The New Yorker

“A marvelous work . . . bold and splendid . . . Locate this book and allow yourself to become caught up, like a kite, in the lifting effects of Seth’s sonnets.”—Washington Post Book World

May–The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store – James McBride — 2023 – 400 pp

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE

“A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel . . . Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing.” —Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review

“We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

June–Mendeleyev’s Dream: The Quest for the Elements–Paul Strathern– 2019–314 pp 

The wondrous and illuminating story of humankind’s quest to discover the fundamentals of chemistry, culminating in Mendeleyev’s dream of the Periodic Table.

**One of Bill Gates’ Top Five Book Recommendations**

In 1869 Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev was puzzling over a way to bring order to the fledgling science of chemistry. Wearied by the effort, he fell asleep at his desk. What he dreamed would fundamentally change the way we see the world.

From ancient philosophy through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role of one man’s dream.

In this elegant, erudite, and entertaining book, Paul Strathern unravels the quixotic history of chemistry through the quest for the elements.

July – The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures–Edward Ball –2013–464 pages

From the National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family, a riveting true life/true crime narrative of the partnership between the murderer who invented the movies and the robber baron who built the railroads.
  
Set in California during its frontier decades, The Tycoon and the Inventor interweaves Muybridge’s quest to unlock the secrets of motion through photography, an obsessive murder plot, and the peculiar partnership of an eccentric inventor and a driven entrepreneur. A tale from the great American West, this popular history unspools a story of passion, wealth, and sinister ingenuity.

On Tuesday, October 10, 2023 we will be discussing  Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. This is the second Tuesday of the month, as usual. To RSVP, please email tonilin@aol.com.

You will be sent the Google Meet link or the physical address upon RSVP.

We have added two additional books at the end of the list (December and January). Please investigate availability as the last one was just published in 2023.

The list of the books for the rest of 2023 and January 2024 is included below. The list has recently changed, so check it twice, please.

October 10, 2023    Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson – 2022, 192 pp.   ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 * An NPR and Time Best Book of the Year * Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada) * Finalist for CALIBA’s 2022 Golden Poppy Awards

A successful art dealer confesses the story of his meteoric rise in this “powerful, intoxicating, and shocking” (The New York Times) novel that’s a “slow burn à la Patricia Highsmith” (Oprah Daily). “You’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting” (Vogue).

November 14    Kindred by Octavia Butler – 2009, 264 pp. “In what is considered a literary masterpiece and Butler’s most popular novel, Kindred follows a young Black woman named Dana. Though she lives in 1976 L.A., she’s suddenly transported to a Civil War-era plantation in Maryland. Soon, the more frequently Dana travels back in time, the longer she stays, as she faces a danger that threatens her life in the future.”

December 12, 2023  Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout – 2022, 304 pp.  – from Amazon, “NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.

“Strout’s understanding of the human condition is capacious.”—NPR”

January 9, 2024    The Guest by Emma Cline – 2023, 294 pp.  From NYT review, “Under Cline’s command, every sentence as sharp as a scalpel, a woman toeing the line between welcome and unwelcome guest becomes a fully destabilizing force. And not just for her hosts, but for the novel itself.”