One Drink Minimum Book Club of Princeton

The results are in! The winner of our poll – and the book we will discuss on August 5, 2026 – is The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker. We used STAR Voting again this month, and twenty-eight members voted in the poll. Of our four book choices, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and The Golem and the Jinni received the most stars in the scoring round and advanced to the runoff round. In the runoff round, two people ranked the finalists equally, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue received twelve votes, and The Golem and the Jinni received fourteen 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, we have two suggestions. First, check your Meetup settings and make sure you have notifications from our book club enabled. If that doesn't solve the problem, our second suggestion is guaranteed to work! Send an email to Chris and Gary at one.drink.minimum.book@gmail.com and tell us your name on Meetup and the date you joined our book club (the extra info is so we can match our members to their email addresses). Once we verify your membership in Meetup, we'll be happy to add you to our gmail mailing list! Your email address will remain private as we send all messages blind cc.

WINNER OF THE 2014 MYTHOPOEIC FANTASY AWARD FOR ADULT LITERATURE • WINNER OF THE 2014 VCU CABELL FIRST NOVEL AWARD • WINNER OF THE 2014 HAROLD U. RIBALOW PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING JEWISH FICTION • 2013 NEBULA AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST NOVEL • 2013 JAMES TIPTREE JR. AWARD NOMINEE

A marvelous and absorbing debut historical fantasy novel about a chance meeting between two supernatural creatures in turn-of-the-century immigrant New York.

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay by a disgraced rabbi knowledgeable in the ways of dark Kabbalistic magic. She serves as the wife to a Polish merchant who dies at sea on the voyage to America. As the ship arrives in New York in 1899, Chava is unmoored and adrift until a rabbi on the Lower East Side recognizes her for the creature she is and takes her in.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped centuries ago in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard. Released by a Syrian tinsmith in a Manhattan shop, Ahmad appears in human form but is still not free. An iron band around his wrist binds him to the wizard and to the physical world.

Chava and Ahmad meet accidentally and become friends and soul mates—unlikely souls connected despite their opposing natures. But when the golem’s violent nature overtakes her one evening, their bond is challenged. An even more powerful threat will emerge, however, and bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their very existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

Compulsively readable, The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, in a wondrously inventive tale that is mesmerizing and unforgettable. —description from the publisher Harper Collins

“Set against the vivid backdrop of New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods in the late 19th century, Helene Wecker’s tale of two fabled creatures has the intimate feel of a story handed down from generation to generation. With a delightful blend of the prosaic and the fanciful, The Golem and the Jinni explores what it means to be human as Chava and Ahmad struggle to live and find love while overcoming the powerful adversary who threatens to destroy them.” —Deborah Harkness, author of A Discovery of Witches

“This impressive first novel manages to combine the narrative magic of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS with the kind of emotional depth, philosophical seriousness and good, old-fashioned storytelling found in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer…The author makes you care enough about the humanity of these magical spirits to not only see them through to the end but also to regret that you’ve reached the last page.” —Patricia Cohen, New York Times

“The tale is meant to be magical, and it is, but Wecker’s real sleight of pen is recreating Manhattan as it was then. She has a historian’s grasp of detail and a novelist’s flair.” —New York Daily News

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:

The results are in! The winner of our poll – and the book we will discuss on September 2, 2026 – is James, by Percival Everett. We used STAR Voting again this month, and twenty-four members voted in the poll. Of our four book choices, Atonement and James received the most stars in the scoring round and advanced to the automatic runoff round. The runoff round uses the information from the poll in a slightly different way: we compare the number of stars each member gave each of the finalists, and their vote goes to the book they gave more stars. Three people gave both finalists the same number of stars, Atonement received eight votes, and James received thirteen votes. Thank you to everyone who voted in our poll!

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, we have two suggestions. First, check your Meetup settings and make sure you have notifications from our book club enabled. If that doesn't solve the problem, our second suggestion is guaranteed to work! Send an email to Chris and Gary at one.drink.minimum.book@gmail.com and tell us your name on Meetup and the date you joined our book club (the extra info is so we can match our members to their email addresses). Once we verify your membership in Meetup, we'll be happy to add you to our gmail mailing list! Your email address will remain private as we send all messages blind cc.

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, TIME, and more.

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view.

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
—description from the publisher Penguin Random House

“Using nuance and vulnerability to emphasize Jim’s humanity, [Everett leaves a] stamp on the literary landscape as he dismantles the stereotypes of the enslaved humans depicted in Twain’s classic. . . Percival Everett has accomplished more than humanizing a marginalized voice. He has, once again, delivered a seminal work of literary reparation.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Heir to Mark Twain’s satirical vision, Everett turns a boyhood memoir into a neo-fugitive slave narrative thriller. . . Using erasure, Everett has produced a daring emendation. Redacting swaths of Huck Finn, he’s revealed another code: the untranslated story of James’s self-emancipation. . . James is a provocative, enlightening work of literary art.”
—The Boston Globe

“[A] sly response to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. . . While The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn lampooned American society through the naiveté of its young narrator, James critiques White racism with the sharp insight of a character who’s felt the lash…What’s most striking, ultimately, is the way James both honors and interrogates Huck Finn, along with the nation that reveres it.”
—The Washington Post

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: