We brought our group to Meetup.com in April 2010, but we actually began our monthly book discussions in September 2009. We have been having our meetings the first Wednesday evening of every month, 7pm at Chapter House Cafe at 620 S. 9th Street (on 9th street between South St. and Bainbridge St.). The meetings generally go no later than 8:30pm. We are casual and enthusiastic; our members enjoy reading and collectively choosing and discussing books on a monthly basis. All paid attendees get a credit for a coffee or tea at time of meetup.
We take turns selecting the books for each month. We determine our book for a given month two months ahead of the meetup. A member volunteers to bring three book selections to the meeting (& posts online beforehand), and after we discuss the book at hand, we vote on the new book. We are sticking with paperbacks (affordable - under $15, practical), and under 400 pages if we can. All genres are open. We also try not to read a book that we have read before. We ask members to give $2 for each meet up to help offset the costs of maintaining our MeetUp page. Movie nights are free for anyone to attend. Please join us!
Here is the list of our previously read books (newest to oldest):
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones
The Three Body Problem, by Cixin Liu
The Girl With Seven Names, by Hyeonseo Lee
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore
Ocean Life in the Old Sailing Ship Days, by John D. Whidden
The Mathematician's Shiva, by Stuart Rojstaczer
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, by David Reich
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond
Educated, A Memoir, by Tara Westover
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani
Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Frog by Mo Yan
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The Alienist (Dr. Laszlo Kreizler #1) by Caleb Carr
The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Servitude and Salvation in the Heartland by Dan Barry
The Changeling by Victor LaValle
1984 by George Orwell
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
The Boy with the Bamboo Heart by Chantal Jauvin
Where We Belong by Emily Giffin
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
Dept. of Speculation by Jewnny Offill
The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi
Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ranson Riggs
Long Bourn by Jo Baker
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Wetsone
I Shall be Near to You by Erin Lindsay McCable
Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
Washington Square by Henry James
Dubliners by James Joyce
Gun with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
The Brief and Wondrous life of Oscar Wao
Lucky Us by Amy Bloom
Tess of the D' Urbervilles
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kid
Ready Player One by Ernist Cline
Bossy Pants by Tina Fey
The Alchemist by Pauolo Coelho
Tomorrow There will be Apricots by Jessica Soffer
The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett
The Night Inspector by Frederick Busch
The Circle By Dave Eggers
Dead Cat Bounce by Norman Green
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hossenini
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
John Dies at the End by Davis Wong
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Dandicat
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Never Let Me Go by Kakuo Ishiguro
The Immortal Life of Henriette Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Just Kids by Patti Smith
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
D.V. by Diana Vreeland
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Heat by Bill Buford
If Today by Sweet by Thrity Umrigar
They Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
The Leftovers by Tom Perotta
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Dream Archipelago by Christopher Priest
Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck
The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
Father Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
The Cave - José Saramago
My Life in France - Julia Child & Alex Prud'Homme
Nurtureshock: New Thinking
About Children - Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman
Sex with Kings - Eleanor Herman
Await Your Reply - Dan Chaon
Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother - James McBride
Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So - Mark Vonnegut
The Believers - Zoe Heller
Finding Nouf - Zoe Ferraris
House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Priceless - Robert K. Wittman
The New Kings of Nonfiction - edited and introduced by Ira Glass
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Flashman and the Dragon - George MacDonald Fraser
The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel - Paul Auster
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace
The Ginger Man - J.P. Donleavy
Bright Shiny Morning - James Frey
Sunflowers - Sheramy Bundrick
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates - Tom Robbins
The Lazarus Project - Aleksandar Hemon
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
