Books to Change Your Life NYC Book Club

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of The Information by James Gleick. (Meeting 2 of 2; Please read all of the second half, chapters 8 through 15, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher: "Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live."

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Mon April 6, 2026: Chapters 1 through 7
Mon May 18, 2026: Chapters 8 through 15 (end)

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://a.co/d/0Ejw7pb

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Ubik by Philip K Dick. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher, "Named one of Time's 100 Best Books, Ubik is a mind-bending psychological thriller about the perception of reality from Philip K. Dick, the Hugo Award-winning author of The Man in the High Castle.

“From the stuff of space opera, Dick spins a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you’ll never be sure you’ve woken up from.”—Lev Grossman, Time

In a dystopian future of psychic powers, Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business — deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, though, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing some strange, reality-bending phenomena, such as Runciter’s face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As their world deteriorates and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all."

“More brilliant than similar experiments conducted by Pynchon or DeLillo.”—Roberto Bolaño

You can get the book on kindle or paperback here:
https://www.amazon.com/Ubik-Philip-K-Dick-ebook/dp/B005LVR6ZA/

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Extreme Economies by Richard Davies. (Meeting 1 of 2; Please read all of the first half, chapters 1 through 5, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher: "To understand how humans react and adapt to economic change we need to study people who live in harsh environments. From war zones, natural disasters and failed states, to aging societies and the challenges of technological advancement, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way.

People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages.

In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today’s biggest economic questions, with vital lessons for our future."

We will split the reading and meetings into two per the below schedule:
Tue June 30, 2026: Chapters 1 through 5
Tue August 11, 2026: Chapters 6 through end

You can get the book in paperback or kindle here:
https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Economies-Lessons-Worlds-Limits/dp/1787631990

All are welcome!

Hello all! We will meet online for a discussion of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. (Please read all of it, prior to the meeting.)

Per the publisher, "Set in the west Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights is the story of two gentry families -- the Earnshaws and the Lintons -- and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. Now considered to be a timeless classic, it was a polarizing and controversial work in its own day, with its frank depictions of mental and physical cruelty and ahead-of-its-time challenges to Victorian conventions and mores.

Emily Brontë's only published novel, it has established her as one of the most significant and most beloved novelists of the nineteenth century, and Wuthering Heights is often listed among the greatest novels of all time by critics and readers alike. "

You can get the book on kindle or paperback here:
https://www.amazon.com/Wuthering-Heights-Penguin-Classics-Bront%C3%AB/dp/0141439556/

All are welcome!