book discussion | BAIN Downtown

On Tuesday, May 12 at 2 pm, we will be discussing The Sellout by Paul Beatty. As usual, we meet on the second Tuesday of each month.

RSVP to tonilin@aol.com with questions, comments, or recommendations. The Zoom or other virtual link will be sent to you before the meeting if you RSVP.

The books to be discussed in May and June are described below. We are currently considering books to read for the next 6 to 9 months. If you would like to receive the list of books we will be voting on please email tonilin@aol.com. . .

May 2026 — The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Fiction. 2015, 305 p. A ferocious satire about race and American culture that won the Booker Prize. Critics praised its wildly funny yet incisive social commentary. Written stream of consciousness. A biting satire about a young man’s isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant.

June 2026 — Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes. Fiction. 2022, 193 p. From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man’s deeper examination of love, friendship, and biography.

This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor Elizabeth Finch. Neil, the narrator, takes her class “Culture and Civilisation,” taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages; we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding, yet commanding woman. While other personal relationships and even his family drift from Neil’s grasp, Elizabeth’s application of her material to the matter of daily living remains important to him, even after her death, in a way that nothing else does.

On Tuesday, March 10, at 2 pm we will be discussing Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck. 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. The May book was just added.

Future reads:

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.

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.