One Drink Minimum Book Club of Princeton

The results are in! The winner of our poll - and the book we will discuss on November 5, 2025 - is Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. We used STAR Voting again this month, and twenty-three members voted in the poll. Of our four book choices, The Humans and Project Hail Mary received the most stars in the scoring round and advanced to the runoff round. In the runoff round, five people ranked the finalists equally, The Humans received eight votes, and Project Hail Mary received ten votes. Thank you to everyone who voted!

If you are a member of One Drink Minimum Book Club and didn't hear about the poll or otherwise have not been receiving Meetup messages, email one.drink.minimum.book@gmail.com and we'll be happy to add you to our mailing list. Your email address will remain private as we send all messages blind cc.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • HUGO AWARD FINALIST • NAMED ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS BY: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?

An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

— description from the publisher Penguin Random House

“Readers may find themselves consuming this emotionally intense and thematically profound novel in one stay-up-all-night-until-your-eyes-bleed sitting. An unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship—nothing short of a science fiction masterwork.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Brilliantly funny and enjoyable . . . one of the most plausible science fiction books I’ve ever read.”
— Tim Peake, ESA astronaut and internationally bestselling author of Limitless

“Reading Project Hail Mary is like going on a field trip to outer space with the best science teacher you’ve ever had—and your class assignment is to save the world. This is one of the most original, compelling, and fun voyages I’ve ever taken.”
— Ernest Cline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ready Player One

Attendance policy: Please be considerate of others!

• RSVP: Sign up if you plan to attend.
• Cancellations: If you need to cancel, please update your RSVP as soon as possible.
• Attendance: Show up if you are on the “Going” list.
• Emergencies: If a last-minute emergency arises, please communicate as soon as you can.
• Consequences: Repeated lack of consideration may result in removal from the group.

Available in local libraries, however: Project Hail Mary is extremely popular right now and library copies are finite! Depending on the library and the format you prefer, you may need to place a hold on the book at your library and wait for your turn to read it, so please check your library ASAP:

The results are in! The winner of our poll - and the book we will discuss on December 10, 2025 - is Berlin, by Jason Lutes. We used STAR Voting again this month, and nineteen members voted in the poll. Of our four book choices, Sabrina and Berlin received the most stars in the scoring round and advanced to the runoff round. In the runoff round, five people ranked the finalists equally, Sabrina received four votes, and Berlin received ten votes. Thank you to everyone who voted!

If you are a member of One Drink Minimum Book Club and didn't hear about the poll or otherwise have not been receiving Meetup messages, email one.drink.minimum.book@gmail.com and we'll be happy to add you to our mailing list. Your email address will remain private as we send all messages blind cc.

EXCELLENCE IN GRAPHIC LITERATURE AWARD: 2019 BOOK OF THE YEAR AND 2019 BEST IN EDUCATIONAL COMICS • DIAMOND GEM AWARD: INDIE GRAPHIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR • 2019 DRAGON AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL • BEST OF 2018 NODS FROM THE WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, GLOBE AND MAIL, THE GUARDIAN, AND MORE!

During the past two decades, Jason Lutes has quietly created one of the masterworks of the graphic novel golden age. Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the medium: rich in its well-researched historical detail, compassionate in its character studies, and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism.

Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens—Marthe Müller, a young woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I, Kurt Severing, an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves these characters’ lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart.

The city itself is the central protagonist in this historical fiction. Lavish salons, crumbling sidewalks, dusty attics, and train stations: all these places come alive in Lutes’ masterful hand. Weimar Berlin was the world’s metropolis, where intellectualism, creativity, and sensuous liberal values thrived, and Lutes maps its tragic, inevitable decline. Devastatingly relevant and beautifully told, Berlin is one of the great epics of the comics medium.

— description from the publisher Drawn & Quarterly

“The magic in Berlin is in the way Lutes conjures, out of old newspapers and photographs, a city so remote from him in time and space… [Berlin has] an ending so electrifying that I gasped.”
— New York Times Book Review

“Berlin reads like not just a masterwork but also a life’s work.”
— The Washington Post, 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2018

““Recommend” isn’t a strong enough verb for conveying how badly you need to read Berlin… The stories that play out between those two bookends sway from the romantic to the apocalyptic and back again, and the intricate linework and oft-mind-blowing layouts are incomparable. For a reader who’s white-knuckling it through our present period of social collapse, Berlin is a beacon of both warning and hope.” — Vulture

Attendance policy: Please be considerate of others!

• RSVP: Sign up if you plan to attend.
• Cancellations: If you need to cancel, please update your RSVP as soon as possible.
• Attendance: Show up if you are on the “Going” list.
• Emergencies: If a last-minute emergency arises, please communicate as soon as you can.
• Consequences: Repeated lack of consideration may result in removal from the group.

Available in local libraries (but not Princeton Library):