Middlemarch – George Eliot
Taking place in the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Middlemarch explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic; Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar; Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally flawed physician; the passionate artist Will Ladislaw; and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein. We discussed this book at Heather's cottage.
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. We discussed this book on Zoom.
Crossing to Safety – Wallace Stegner
Called a "magnificently crafted story . . . brimming with wisdom" by Howard Frank Mosher in The Washington Post Book World, Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the greatest and most cherished American novels of the 20th century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage. We discussed this book on Zoom.
(From
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9820.Crossing_to_Safety)
A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles
A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery. We discussed this book on Zoom.
(From
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34066798-a-gentleman-in-moscow)
The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights, their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper—despite the displeasure of Achilles' mother, Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. We discussed this book on Zoom.
(From
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11250317-the-song-of-achilles)
The Book of Longings – Sue Monk Kidd
Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity, The Book of Longings is an inspiring account of one woman’s bold struggle to realize the passion and potential inside her while living in a time, place, and culture devised to silence her. We discussed this book on Zoom.
(From
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52698452-the-book-of-longings)
Untamed – Glennon Doyle
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both a memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It offers a piercing, electrifying examination of the restrictive expectations women are issued from birth; shows how hustling to meet those expectations leaves women feeling dissatisfied and lost; and reveals that when we quit abandoning ourselves and instead abandon the world’s expectations of us, we become women who can finally look at ourselves and recognize: There She Is. We discussed this book on Zoom.
(From
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52129515-untamed)
The Rest
- The Alice Network—Kate Quinn
- At Home—Bill Bryson
- Black Rednecks and White Liberals—Thomas Sowell
- The Colour Purple—Alice Walker
- Feel Free: Essays—Zadie Smith
- The Fire Next Time—James Baldwin
- The Forgotten Home Child—Genevieve Graham
- From The Ashes—Jesse Thistle
- Gift From the Sea—Anne Morrow Lindbergh
- Great Expectations—Charles Dickens
- Half of a Yellow Sun—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Henna Artist—Alka Joshi
- How to Be an Antiracist—Ibram X. Kendi
- Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austin
- The Skin We’re In—Desmond Cole
- The Switch—Beth O'Leary
- The Tao of Pooh—Benjamin Hoff
- The Taster—V. S. Alexander
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz—Heather Morris
- Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston
- When I Fell From the Sky—Juliane Koepcke
- White Fragility—Robin DiAngelo
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