What we’re about
đź“šThis book club is for all book lovers surrounding the general Lorton area. Each month we will select a book and meet up on the last Thursday of the month to discuss.
We will have questions to kick off the discussion, but then we’ll let the conversation go where it may.
Book Club Reads:
2022
- February 2022: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
- March 2022: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
- April 2022: Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
- May 2022: The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
- June 2022: The Man Who Came and Went by Joe Stillman
- July 2022: Pachinko by Lee Min-jin
- August 2022: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
- September 2022: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (a Lorton local!)
- October 2022: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
- November 2022: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
- December 2022: No Book Chat - Happy Holidays! ❄️
2023
- January 2023: The Measure by Nikki Erlick
- February 2023: Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang
Happy One-Year to Lorton Book Club! 🎊📚 - March 2023: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- April 2023: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- May 2023: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
- June 2023: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
- July 2023: Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
- August 2023: The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
- September 2023: Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
- October 2023: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- November 2023: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
- December 2023: No Book Chat - Happy Holidays! ❄️
2024
- January 2024: The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter
- February 2024: All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
- March 2024: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
Upcoming events (4)
See all- May Book Selection: The MerciesNew Hope Church, Lorton, VA
Join us on the last Thursday of May for our discussion on The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
When the women take over, is it sorcery or power?
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the skies break into a sudden and reckless storm. All forty of the village’s men were at sea, including Maren’s father and brother, and all forty are drowned in the otherworldly disaster.
For the women left behind, survival means defying the strict rules of the island. They fish, hunt, and butcher reindeer—which they never did while the men were alive. But the foundation of this new feminine frontier begins to crack with the arrival of Absalom Cornet, a man sent from Scotland to root out alleged witchcraft. Cornet brings with him the threat of danger—and a pretty, young Norwegian wife named Ursa.
As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.
We will meet in Side Lobby 1 at New Hope (8905 Ox Rd., Lorton).
- June Book Selection: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their AccentsNew Hope Church, Lorton, VA
Join us on the last Thursday of June for our discussion on How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez.
Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez’s beloved first novel gives voice to four sisters as they grow up in two cultures. The GarcĂa sisters—Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and SofĂa—and their family must flee their home in the Dominican Republic after their father’s role in an attempt to overthrow brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo is discovered. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Caribbean. In the wondrous but not always welcoming U.S.A., their parents try to hold on to their old ways as the girls try find new lives: by straightening their hair and wearing American fashions, and by forgetting their Spanish. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating to be caught between the old world and the new. Here they tell their stories about being at home—and not at home—in America.
"A clear-eyed look at the insecurity and yearning for a sense of belonging that are a part of the immigrant experience . . . Movingly told." —The Washington Post Book World
We will meet in Side Lobby 1 at New Hope (8905 Ox Rd., Lorton).
- July Book Selection: The PlotNew Hope Church, Lorton, VA
Join us on the last Thursday of July for our discussion on The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written―let alone published―anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then . . . he hears the plot.
Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that―a story that absolutely needs to be told.
In a few short years, all of Evan Parker’s predictions have come true, but Jake is the author enjoying the wave. He is wealthy, famous, praised and read all over the world. But at the height of his glorious new life, an e-mail arrives, the first salvo in a terrifying, anonymous campaign: You are a thief, it says.
As Jake struggles to understand his antagonist and hide the truth from his readers and his publishers, he begins to learn more about his late student, and what he discovers both amazes and terrifies him. Who was Evan Parker, and how did he get the idea for his “sure thing” of a novel? What is the real story behind the plot, and who stole it from whom?
We will meet in Side Lobby 1 at New Hope (8905 Ox Rd., Lorton).
- August Book Selection: The PushNew Hope Church, Lorton, VA
Join us on the last Thursday of August for our discussion on The Push by Ashley Audrain.
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter—she doesn't behave like most children do.
Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.
Then their son Sam is born—and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.
We will meet in Side Lobby 1 at New Hope (8905 Ox Rd., Lorton).