About us
!!! SCAM WARNING TO AUTHORS !!!
WE ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH THE EMAIL ACCOUNT:
This is a SCAM EMAIL ACCOUNT: **womensbookclubwinesnacks@gmail.com**
The above address is NOT US, NOR OUR EMAIL.
IT IS A SCAM. PLEASE REPORT TO GOOGLE IF YOU RECEIVE A SCAM FROM THE EMAIL LISTED ABOVE.
WE WILL NEVER EMAIL ANYONE AND ASK FOR MONEY FOR ANY REASON.
All of our books are suggested by members and voted on by our members.
We NEVER contact authors, publishers, or the like.
WHAT WE ARE ABOUT
This Meet Up is for Women of any age interested in a social book discussion. The women in this group seek deep meaning, expanding ideas, and social connection through book conversations. As we are in transition and trying to determine whether our members prefer in-person or virtual, we meet in person on the third Wednesday evening of each month (referred to as Book Discussion 1 ) at Palermo Restaurant, 791 Auzerais Ave., San José, CA 95126. We have a virtual option on the fourth Thursday of each month (referred to as Online Book Discussion 2 ) for those who prefer virtual, live out of the area, or do not make it off the waitlist for the in-person meet-up. Please check the event page for the Zoom link. We invite you to listen to or read the book in any media format that is convenient for you. Occasionally, we may also post opportunities to volunteer in the community or other bonus events that our members are interested in. Get ready for light-hearted and open-minded conversation. Cheers to your next page turned!
A NOTE ON COST
There is no required cost to join or attend our meet-up. We do ask those who feel they can if you might consider sponsoring a month of meet-up costs at $14.99 or a month of Zoom costs at $13.05 per month. This allows us to offer our Meet-Up events without a registration cost charged to members for each event attended. Please message Michelle Lee Walters if you are able to sponsor one of these options for a month**.** We thank you for your support & help in keeping this meeting accessible.
A NOTE ON COMMUNICATION
The gals who lead Women's Book Club, Wine, and Snacks are donating their time, energy, and knowledge for fun and for free. We appreciate all they do to keep us up and running, which is a lot more time, energy, and wisdom than you may think. Meet Up is paid to keep the software of this application, whether on the web, your phone, or tablet, running smoothly. Unfortunately, we cannot access your private contact information through your Meet-Up profile. We message our members through Meet Up. When you can not find our emails, you may want to search your email for: [WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com](mailto:WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com). Our emails from Meet Up may be in your spam folder. If you have issues receiving emails or are unsure how to access something, please reach out to Meet-Up as they are the sole providers of this platform and the only ones who can help you work out kinks in their system. If you believe you just need some help navigating the web page or application, please message or speak with one of our volunteer leaders. We would be happy to help if you can make time for us outside the meeting. We want this to be accessible and fun for you and we are willing to make time to be sure the process is smooth for you.
A NOTE ON BOOK CHOICES
All the books we read are suggested and selected as a group. Feel free to message any organizers (Michelle, Jean, Sarah, Nicole, Christine, or Lucy) with your book suggestions for our next poll. Unfortunately, as of August 31, 2021, Meet Up has taken away the Poll function. You will receive a message by email through Women's Book Club Wine and Snacks to vote on our poll through an online poll service that is to be determined. Please check your email spam frequently if your Meet Up messages are not landing in your Inbox.
A NOTE ON THE TYPES OF BOOKS WE READ
We are not necessarily a fiction-only book club. We are a book club that relies on its members to suggest books and vote on which books they would like to read for the next five months through a poll. As the founder of this group, I have put a handful of nonfiction books on the poll, and the members do not vote for them. We rely on what the majority votes for. Hopefully, those of us who would like some nonfiction reads will suggest and vote for those suggestions.
If you have suggestions for books that you would like the group to read, feel free to share them with any of the organizers. However, please note that if your suggestions were received after the poll was published or if our poll leaders realized these books had been read or voted on in past polls, they may not make the list. But you should suggest them again anyway if you want the group to reread a past selection or if your suggestion was not taken the first time around. It has happened that the poll managers put a book on the poll again after it was suggested multiple times, even the ones we have already read.
A NOTE ON VIRTUAL VS IN-PERSON MEETINGS:
We have decided that as long as we have an ongoing interest in people registering for both our in-person meetings, which are labeled Book Discussion 1, and our virtual meetings, labeled Book Discussion 2, we will continue to offer both options every month for each book.
A NOTE ON NO-SHOWS
If you have reserved a spot for a meeting and cannot make it, we request you unreserve yourself or send a note to one of the organizers. If you give no notice and are a no-show, you will be flagged & after three no-shows, you will be removed from the group. We ask for this courtesy so those on the waitlist can join in your absence.
Last updated: July 25, 2024, by MLW.;
Author warning created Nov. 21, 2025 by MLW
Upcoming events
11
Book Discussion 2: (Virtual) Heartwood by Amity Gaige
·OnlineOnlineOur May book is:
Heartwood
by: Amity Gaige---------------------------------------
Summary:
(Copied and posted from Judy A.'s Summary in Book Discussion 1.)
In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is a forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie writes her thoughts in a journal as letters to her mother, battling the elements and struggling to keep hope.
Leading the search for Valerie is Beverly, a Maine State Game Warden. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges that intensifies the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.
Heartwood is loosely based on the real-life tragedy of Geraldine Largay, who became lost when hiking the Appalachian Trail in the Summer of 2013.Related Book: (Warning, there may be spoilers!)
When You Find My Body: The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay on the Appalachian Trail by D. DauphineeSources:
Amazon - Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Portland Press Harold----------------------------------------
Announcements: Book Recommendations requested. Feel free to message Jean O. or other leaders with your suggestions. We just completed the POLL. The next poll or any announcements will be emailed from the email address: WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com. Feel free to search for this email, as MeetUp emails tend to land in SPAM or SOCIAL mailboxes.
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Donations: If you would like to make a small contribution to support our costs, please email Michelle at ***Luvshell1@gmail.com*** for donation information.
We are all Volunteers: Note that no one makes a profit; donations are strictly used to cover our costs.
----------------------------------------Join us at this Virtual event.
We encourage you to join both Book Discussion 1 (in-person) & Book Discussion 2 (virtual) and treat yourself to the full experience of ideas and discussion.If you can't attend, please change your RSVP to Not Going.
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Zoom HTML
Zoom Meeting ID: 822 9320 8679
Zoom Passcode: 86127311 attendees
Book Discussion 1: (in person) The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Palermo Italian Restaurant, 791 Auzerais Ave, San Jose, CA, USOur June book is:
The Wedding People
by Alison Espach----------------------------------------
Summary: It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, without luggage, alone. Everyone in the lobby mistakes her for one of the wedding people at an impending wedding on the site, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t there for the big event.
Phoebe is there because she’s dreamed of coming for years. She hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is a nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198902277-the-wedding-people)
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Announcements: Book Recommendations requested. Feel free to message Jean O. or other leaders with your suggestions. We just completed the POLL. The next poll or any announcements will be emailed from the email address: WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com. Feel free to search for this email, as MeetUp emails tend to land in SPAM or SOCIAL mailboxes.
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Donations: If you would like to make a small contribution to support our costs, please email Michelle at Luvshell1@gmail.com for donation information.
We are all Volunteers: Note that no one makes a profit; donations are strictly used to cover our costs.
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Join us at this IN-PERSON event.
The restaurant details are typically located in the right-hand corner of your screen on this meetup event page.
If you can't attend, consider joining us to discuss the same book at the online meetup we call "Book Discussion 2". We also encourage you to join both Book Discussion 1 (in-person) & Book Discussion 2 (virtual) and treat yourself to the full experience of ideas and discussion. Details are in a separate meetup event.
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11 attendeesBook Discussion 2: (Virtual) The Wedding People by Alison Espach
·OnlineOnlineOur June book is:
The Wedding People
by Alison Espach----------------------------------------
Summary:
Join us to talk about a funny, tender novel in which a newly widowed woman takes a dream trip and lands there in the middle of a destination wedding.
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Announcements: Book Recommendations requested. The next poll or any announcements will be emailed from WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com. Feel free to search MeetUp emails tend to land in SPAM or SOCIAL mailboxes.
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Donations: If you would like to make a small contribution to support our costs, please email Michelle at Luvshell1@gmail.com for donation information.
We are all Volunteers: Note that no one makes a profit; donations are strictly used to cover our costs.
----------------------------------------
Join us at this Virtual event.
We encourage you to join both Book Discussion 1 (in-person) & Book Discussion 2 (virtual) and treat yourself to the full experience of ideas and discussion.If you can't attend, please change your RSVP to Not Going.
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Zoom HTML
Meeting ID: 876 7856 8597
Passcode: 62248610 attendees
Book Discussion 1: (in person) What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
TBA: No location yet, 0000 Unknown, San Jose, CA, USOur July book is:
What We Can Know
by Ian McEwan
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JULY 2026 WHAT WE CAN KNOW BY IAN MC EWAN
DISCUSSION LOCATION IS TBA.We Will NOT BE MEETING at Palermo's in JULY.
Palermo's will be taking their yearly
vacation in July 2026.
We appreciate the owners treating
their Employees well & making sure
they get a well-deserved break for all their
hard work.LOCATION IS IN THE WORKS &
WILL BE ANNOUNCED SHORTLY.
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Summary:(This summary was written by Michelle Lee Walters, your host.)
Ian McEwan utilizes the scholarly protagonist to tackle big questions and our deepest fears regarding our future as human beings within our societies and cultures. This is not necessarily very dystopian, Ian points out, except maybe for his take on AI, but rather looking back into our time now from a distant future, but not so distant that the society in the novel doesn’t feel the touch of our present. It leaves us standing in the question of what our moral obligation is to the future. Ian bases this fictional future on the historical, present, and imagined futures that lie in the details of London's communities.
McEwan brings us to the heart of what truth means for a future generation left to sift through massive amounts of data spanning a person's entire life, but what do our short blurbs, texts, and emails say? Is the lost art of letter writing from ages before technology lost, and therefore, the truth harder to find? How do all of these pieces contribute not only to the loss of individuals’ memories but also to the loss of societal, cultural, and historical memory – our identity individually and as a society?
Has it ever crossed your mind, regarding future societies, how they will perceive us as they look behind them, into our now? Will we be villains, or will we be viewed as heroes? The book is very apropos, as everyday people today are wondering what quality of life children and grandchildren will have in the future. How do we keep the spirit of hope so that we can move forward in our obligation to what we owe the future? This book takes those questions and turns them into an experience lived in this novel of fiction.
Also, at the heart of this novel is the most eloquent form of writing humans have created, carried through as a blank page for the characters to imagine their own truths and fears about life, expressed in a lost poem written in 2014. Ian McEwan, the author of this book, deliberately places a poem as the thread through time because, in real life, he has always felt that poetry is our highest form of writing.
Rest assured that the author believes in the hope that nature and humans will pull through tragedies, mishaps, disasters, and catastrophes, as they have for all the years before us. That there will be future generations to live lives, wonder through the legacies we have left behind, and continue making history on this planet.
I look forward to hosting and participating in this in-depth discussion with you. Join me!
Check out my source!
CBC Arts. (2025, Oct. 28). Atonement author Ian McEwan’s surprising take on the future. [Video file].----------------------------------------
Announcements: Book recommendations are requested; they can be sent to Jean O. or any other group leader. The next poll or any announcements will be emailed from WomensBookClubWineAndSnacks-announce@messages.meetup.com. Feel free to search MeetUp emails, which tend to land in SPAM or SOCIAL mailboxes.
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Donations: If you would like to make a small contribution to support our costs, please email Michelle at Luvshell1@gmail.com for donation information.
We are all Volunteers: Note that no one makes a profit; donations are strictly used to cover our costs.
----------------------------------------
Join us at this IN-PERSON event.
The restaurant details are typically located in the right-hand corner of your screen on this meetup event page.
If you can't attend, consider joining us for the online meetup we call "Book Discussion 2" to discuss the same book. We also encourage you to join both Book Discussion 1 (in-person) & Book Discussion 2 (virtual) and treat yourself to the full experience of ideas and discussion. Details are in a separate meetup event.
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10 attendees
Past events
200
Group links
Members
1,098
