Greater Sacramento Women's Book Club

MIDTOWN February 2026 — Just the Funny Parts, by Nell Scovell

Wed, Feb 18 · 6:30 PM PST

Time Tested Books, 1114 21st St, Sacramento, CA, US

📖 Why this book? 📖

You've almost certainly laughed at Scovell's jokes — you just didn't know it until now.

Just the Funny Parts is a juicy and scathingly funny insider look at how pop culture gets made. For more than thirty years, writer, producer and director Nell Scovell worked behind the scenes of iconic TV shows, including The Simpsons, Late Night with David Letterman, Murphy Brown, NCIS, The Muppets, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, which she created and executive produced.

Hard to find a book? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library.

💠 What can I expect? 💠

We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.

💬 We catch up socially;
🧊 we recommend a book or author, and
📕 we start our book discussion at 7pm.

👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜

◾️A snack or drink to share
◾️$5 (cash or Venmo *8913)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄

✴️ Event Fee Details ✴️

The $5 is split between our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.

You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon *8913) or bring cash.

However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns.

(Heads up: Time-Tested Books can run a bit warm after hot downtown days like these. 😅)

Thanks, and see you all soon!

📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚

In 2009, Scovell gave up her behind-the-scenes status when the David Letterman sex scandal broke. Only the second woman ever to write for his show, Scovell used the moment to publicly call out the lack of gender diversity in late-night TV writers' rooms. "One of the boys" came out hard for "all of the girls." Her criticisms fueled a cultural debate. Two years later, Scovell was collaborating with Sheryl Sandberg on speeches and later on Lean In, which resulted in a worldwide movement.

Now Scovell is opening up with this fun, honest, and often shocking account.
Scovell knows what it's like to put words in the mouths of President Barack Obama, Mark Harmon, Candice Bergen, Bob Newhart, Conan O'Brien, Alyssa Milano, and Kermit the Frog, among many others.
Through her eyes, you'll sit in the Simpson writers' room... stand on the Oscar red carpet... pin a tail on Miss Piggy... bond with Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy... and experience a Stephen King-like encounter with Stephen King.

Just the Funny Parts is a fast-paced account of a nerdy girl from New England who fought her way to the top of the highly-competitive, male-dominated entertainment field. The book delivers invaluable insights into the creative process and tricks for navigating a difficult workplace. It's part memoir, part how-to, and part survival story. Or, as Scovell puts it, "It's like Unbroken, but funnier and with slightly less torture."

MIDTOWN March 2026 — There There, by Tommy Orange

Wed, Mar 18 · 6:30 PM PDT

Time Tested Books, 1114 21st St, Sacramento, CA, US

📖 Why this book? 📖

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A WONDROUS AND SHATTERING AWARD-WINNING NOVEL THAT FOLLOWS TWELVE CHARACTERS FROM NATIVE COMMUNITIES: ALL TRAVELING TO THE BIG OAKLAND POWWOW, ALL CONNECTED TO ONE ANOTHER IN WAYS THEY MAY NOT YET REALIZE.

A contemporary classic, this "astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale)
"places Native American voices front and center" (NPR/Fresh Air).

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

REVIEWS

• Kirkus Reviews * Publisher's Weekly
• Library Journal.
  AWARDS
  National Book Critics Circle Award
  Pulitzer Prize Finalist
  Notable Books for Adults
  10 Best Books of 2018

Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library

💠 What can I expect? 💠

We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.

💬 We catch up socially;
🧊 we recommend a book or author, and
📕 we start our book discussion at 7pm.

👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜

◾️A snack or drink to share
◾️$5 (cash or Venmo *8913)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄

✴️ Event Fee Details ✴️

The $5 is split between our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.

You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon *8913) or bring cash.

However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns

Thanks, and see you all soon!

📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American — grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism

A book with "so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation" (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down - full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

ROSEVILLE March 2026 — There There, by Tommy Orange

Thu, Mar 19 · 6:00 PM PDT

Auburn Folsom Rd, Granite Bay, Ca, US

📍 Location: We have been granted invitation to a trial meetup at the Old Haunts Bookshop 📚

8789 Auburn Folsom Rd
Suite C,
Granite Bay, CA 95746

🗓️Calendar: Third Thursday of this month; and working on the Thursday after the third Wednesday of each month.

📖 Why this book? 📖

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A WONDROUS AND SHATTERING AWARD-WINNING NOVEL THAT FOLLOWS TWELVE CHARACTERS FROM NATIVE COMMUNITIES: ALL TRAVELING TO THE BIG OAKLAND POWWOW, ALL CONNECTED TO ONE ANOTHER IN WAYS THEY MAY NOT YET REALIZE.

A contemporary classic, this "astonishing literary debut" (Margaret Atwood, bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale)
"places Native American voices front and center" (NPR/Fresh Air).

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

REVIEWS

• Kirkus Reviews * Publisher's Weekly
• Library Journal.
  AWARDS
  National Book Critics Circle Award
  Pulitzer Prize Finalist
  Notable Books for Adults
  10 Best Books of 2018

Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library

💠 What can I expect? 💠

We will meet in-person in the Events Center Room at the back of the store.

💬 We catch up socially;
🧊 we recommend a book or author, and
📕 we start our book discussion at 7pm.

👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜

◾️A Raley’s snack or drink to share
◾️$5 (cash or Venmo *8913)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄

✴️ Event Fee Details ✴️

The $5 contributes to our access to this Meetup platform.

You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon *8913) or bring cash.

However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns

Thanks, and see you all soon!

📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American — grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism

A book with "so much jangling energy and brings so much news from a distinct corner of American life that it's a revelation" (The New York Times). It is fierce, funny, suspenseful, and impossible to put down - full of poetry and rage, exploding onto the page with urgency and force. There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

MIDTOWN April 2026 — Matrix, by Lauren Groff

Wed, Apr 15 · 6:30 PM PDT

Time Tested Books, 1114 21st St, Sacramento, CA, US

📖 Why this book? 📖

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2022 JOYCE CAROL
OATES PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2021
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, TIME, NPR, The Financial Times, Good Housekeeping, Esquire, Vulture, Marie Claire, Vox, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today and more!

MATRIX
"A relentless exhibition of Groff's freakish talent. In just over 250 pages, she gives us a character study to rival Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell." - USA Today
"An electric reimagining... feminist, sensu-al... unforgettable." - O, The Oprah Magazine
"Thrilling and heartbreaking." -Time Magazine
"[A] page-by-page pleasure as we soar with her." -New York Times
One of our best American writers, and author of the highly anticipated THE VASTER WILDS, Lauren Groff returns with this exhilarating and groundbreaking novel

Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library

💠 What can I expect? 💠

We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.

💬 We catch up socially;
🧊 we recommend a book or author, and
📕 we start our book discussion at 7pm.

👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜

◾️A snack or drink to share
◾️$5 (cash or Venmo *8913)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄

✴️ Event Fee Details ✴️

The $5 is split between our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.

You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon *8913) or bring cash.

However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns.

Thanks, and see you all soon!

📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects.

But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?
Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.