Hudson Valley Readers Meetup

Hudson Valley Readers: Monthly Book & Story Exchange

Join local book lovers for a relaxed evening of conversation, connection, and storytelling. Each month, we gather to share the tales that have captured our imaginations—whether it’s a novel, memoir, or article that moved you.

Bring your current read, your favorite story, or simply your curiosity. We’ll chat about what we’re reading, exchange recommendations, and enjoy great company over good conversation.

📚 BYOB: Bring Your Own Book — and an open mind!

Tips on where to begin if you want recommendations:

2025 releases

1. Mona’s Eyes – Thomas Schlesser
   A young girl and her grandfather wander museums together; each painting becomes a life lesson. Art, grief, beauty, and growing up in one slim but emotional novel. 

2. Buckeye – Patrick Ryan
   Multigenerational “Great American Novel”–style family saga: small-town mid-century America, war, love, secrets, and everything messy in between. Great if you want something immersive but still very readable. 

3. Atmosphere: A Love Story – Taylor Jenkins Reid
   Six astronauts, a cutting-edge shuttle program, and very human entanglements in space. Essentially character-driven relationship drama… but in orbit. 

4. What We Can Know – Ian McEwan
   Part love story, part climate fiction, written by a modern literary heavyweight. It leans into language, community, and how we live honestly on a warming planet — feels very “Overstory-adjacent” in theme. 

5. Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy
   Near-future eco-collapse, a coastal town on the brink, and one family at the center of it all. Gritty, emotional, and full of weather, wilderness, and moral knots. 

6. We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat – Syou Ishida
   Magical-realist comfort: a mysterious clinic only visible to those who truly need help, and a cast of troubled people finding solace via a crew of very intentional cats. Cozy, healing, and cat-heavy. 

7. I, Medusa – Ayana Gray
   A mythic retelling that reframes Medusa as more than a “monster” — power, politics, and patriarchal myth through a feminist, fantastical lens. Perfect if you loved Circe and like gods/monsters with nuance. 

8. Dream Count – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
   New novel from the author of Americanah: intertwined lives, love, race, and identity with her usual sharp social observation and lush prose. 

⸻

2. Recent prize-winners everyone’s talking about

3. James – Percival Everett
   Retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s point of view. It just won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2024 National Book Award, and was also a Booker finalist — so it’s basically the consensus “must read” literary novel right now. It’s funny, furious, and very smart about race, power, and freedom. 

4. Night Watch – Jayne Anne Phillips
   The 2024 Pulitzer winner for fiction, set after the U.S. Civil War: a girl in a West Virginia asylum, a mother searching for her, and the long tail of violence and poverty. Quietly devastating, lyrical, trauma-aware. 

5. Orbital – Samantha Harvey
   Won major awards in 2024 and gets described as a “space station novel for people who think they don’t like sci-fi”: a day in the life of astronauts, focused on interior lives, time, and the fragility of Earth seen from above.