The Literary Wineaux Society OC

Book Summary
A novel about a young woman’s efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn’t she? She’s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate. Amazon Link

Book Details
Page Count: 304
Publish Date: July 10, 2018
Audiobook: 7 hours, 14 minutes. Narrated by Julia Whelan

Optional Further Reading and Viewing
Watch: Interview with Author on Politics & Prose
Read: Q&A with the Author for Rumpus

Location - Wine Gallery
Weather permitting we will once again be at Wine Gallery Laguna Beach (sorry backup location fell through), however in November we will be back at Five Vines or if open Cowboy Nicks at Riverstreet)
Free Parking Underground off Pearl Street, steps directly to restaurant or metered street parking. This is outdoor seating so please dress accordingly.
Wines by the glass and full food menu - see MENU!

Book Details
Page Count: 352
Publish Date: September 15, 2026
Audiobook: 11 hours, Narrated by Nicola Walker
Amazon Link

Interview with Richard Osman at the Rancho Mirage Writer's Festival about his new series "We Solve Murders"

Location
Bru Market & Grill, Lake Forest
Brunch featuring full menu + bottomless mimosas!
Max 7 people as that is their limit for separate checks.

1. 'What We Can Know' by Ian McEwan
From the award-winning author of 'Atonement' comes a genre-bending novel full of secrets and surprises.
2014: At a dinner for close friends, renowned poet Francis Blundy reads aloud a new poem dedicated to his wife. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and remains a mystery.
2119: Just over one 100 years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well. Amazon Link

2. 'The Wasp Trap' by Mark Edwards
Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing.
But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one by one.
It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: The Wasp Trap. This experiment and the other tragic events of that summer long ago may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight. Amazon Link

3. 'Be Ready When the Luck Happens' by Ina Garten
Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way. Amazon Link.

4. 'Exit Party' by Emily St. John Mandel
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. A novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change. Amazon Link

5. 'I Regret Almost Everything' by Keith McNally
A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell’s. Eloquent and opinionated, Keith McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety. Amazon Link

6. 'After Taste' by Daria Lavelle
Some hungers never fade.
When Konstantin Duhovny cooks a dish tied to a memory of someone deceased, he can summon their ghost back for one final meal. But what begins as a thrilling gift quickly spins out of control when Kostya decides to open a restaurant that promises to reunite the Living and the Dead. (It turns out that messing with the afterlife comes at a steep cost.)
As the boundaries between worlds start to blur, and as Kostya falls in love with a woman with her own secret relationship with the afterlife, he must confront the limits of what can be reclaimed, and what we must let go, in order to move on.
Deliciously unique and deeply emotional, Aftertaste is an epic love story and a genre-blending adventure through eating, grieving, and the moments that make us feel alive. Amazon Link

7. 'So Old, So Young' by Grant Ginder
Six Friends. Five Parties. Twenty Years…
How did we get So Old, So Young?
A generation-defining novel that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of twenty years bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we run from and cling to our friends in love, life, and death.
For Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship.
But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds, and testing what we thought we knew. From East Village apartment parties and disastrous destination weddings, to fortieth birthdays and suburban backyard barbecues, a resonant, funny, and deeply moving novel about the growing pains of the Millennial generation. Amazon Link

Amazon Link

Book Details:
Page Count: 356
Publish Date: October 6, 2026
Audiobook: 14 hours, 23 minutes. Narrated by Megan Tusing (she narrates a lot of the Freida McFadden books)

Location:
Bru Market & Grill
Bottomless Mimosas! (Yay!) and Yummy Brunch Menu!