Read It Like You Mean It

June's book was suggested by Peter and accepted in April's meeting.

198 pages, very in stock at IndyPL. John Green is an Indianapolis based author and this is his most recent book, published in mid-March.

I read this shortly after it was published and think it's pretty good - it's a nonfiction from Green but with his usual narrative style and a human connection to the disease that he is writing about. This feels like a book that combines the best of Green's desire to write stories that matter and his lived experience (or more-than-casually knowing others' lived experience) of some problem or another.

That this disease is particularly metaphorical and historical and reflective of our social understanding of disease is all icing on the cake here for a novelist like Green.

From Goodreads:
Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.

I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing

[Update! We're switching to Story of Edgar Sawtelle at Carla's request -she started the previous book and was absolutely not having it and wanted to switch]

July's book was suggested by Carla and accepted without a vote because it's her last book club with us before she moves to St. Louis so she could pick whatever she wanted.

566 pages, 9 copies at IndyPL.

Published in 2008 as a coming of age fiction from a purported master storyteller, this is his first novel. The IndyPL describes it as a tale reminiscent of Hamlet - but set in rural Wisconsin.

This will be a good training for Carla to lead a book club in St. Louis, since I will be out of town for a wedding in Fort Worth.

From Goodreads:
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm—and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires—spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.

I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing