Book Club for Writers
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How does the Book Club for Writers differ from other book clubs? For starters, the group doesn’t so much discuss the book as dissect it. Members want to discover what it is about the writing itself that makes the book work or, in some cases, not work. Also, we consider how we can “borrow” the author’s techniques for our own writing. Disagreements abound and are always part of the fun, as is the food. For example, we downed grilled cheese sandwiches during our discussion of In the Deep Midwinter, in which the characters indulge in 1950s comfort food.
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The Writers’ Book Club A writer is a reader moved to emulation If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write |
Book Club for Writers meets the third Thursday of the month
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Location in Tom’s weekly email
RBWG Book Club Selections Jun- Nov 2019
June 20 Educated by Tara Westover. I was fascinated by both Westover's life story and her writing, and this was the first book I read in a long time that I couldn't put down. The author reports how she and her siblings lived in an isolated world with a paranoid father, an enabling mother, and very little access to education or technology in rural Idaho. I admired her ability to report so honestly on many embarrassing, hurtful details and her ability to use shorter chapters and a poetry-like attention to small, clear moments. This book enthralled me because hope shines through, and I think it would lead to a helpful discussion on nonfiction craft and a new appreciation about what it means to be educated. (Ethan Joella) Kathy Winfield
July 18 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen. Number 1 NYT best seller list fiction, a compelling tale of young abandoned child’s survival in a marsh of coastal North Carolina. (Joan Hartogs) Renay Regardie
August 15 Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy (novel). I had never read anything by this author although she has a great reputation. This book surprised me—the “masterwork of plot” as Ann Patchett calls it, kept me turning the pages and I liked that beneath the suspense there were larger issues at play about class and privilege. As writers, I think we could have a great discussion around the many points of view, which on one hand, kept the story going, but do we need them all? Why do writers choose to shift POV when they do? How does it help and hurt? Overall, a great story with a lot of writing choices to discuss. (Maribeth Fischer) Sarah Barnett
September 19 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro. Because she writes so beautifully, says a great deal in each sentence. You don't feel the need to skip over anything. I love short stories and she is a master. (Ann Nolan and Carol Bruce) Joanne Sinsheimer
October 17 Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson (novel). This first novel by a 72-year old woman, written in the form of letters, is smart, beautifully written, and stylistically clever. the novel chronicles the correspondence between a lonely farm wife and the curator at the museum where the Tollund Man resides. (This was the naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, and was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body. He who was the subject of a famous poem by Seamus Heaney.) As the two begin writing letters to one another—at first mostly informational—they find that they have a ton in common and begin to share their lives through letters. For us, as writers and readers, the form itself gives us a lot to talk about, but a novel written in letters also deals very explicitly with voice—not only the different voices/styles of the letter writers, but the way those voices change as the relationship deepens. I loved that this was a first novel by a seventy-two year old, that it was so charming—a word I don't often use—and that the characters, in a short time and a short novel, were so fully developed—their histories, their families, their cares, passions, and secrets. And I liked the questions it asked about what makes a life satisfying. (Maribeth Fischer) Ginny Daly
November 21 Inheritance by Dani Shapiro (memoir). I never would have read this book because I was not interested in the subject—it felt old, cliched: a woman gets a DNA test and discovers her father is not her father. But I like Dani Shapiro as a writer—she is smart, literary, brings other references and sources into her memoirs—and so I grabbed it. I am so glad I did. I could not put it down. I looked forward to it. Beautifully paced, I am curious about how she structured this, how she kept my interest, how she is able to write compelling and emotional memoir that does not feel like wallowing in me, me, me. (Maribeth Fischer) Linda Federman
Books We Have Read Since April 2009
NONFICTION
Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson. (Rehoboth Reads chosen book)
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison (creative nonfiction)
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown (August 2016)
I Could Tell you Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory.Before Night Falls, Patricia Hampl,
Winter Journal, Paul Auster
For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
She’s Not There, Jennifer Finley-Boylan
The Big Sea. Langston Hughes
Local Wonders, Ted Kooser
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
Everybody Was so Young: The Love Story of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Amanda Viall
The Suicide Index, Joan Wickersham
Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World. Anthony Doerr
Wild. Cheryl Strayed
Let Me Finish, Richard Angell
In the Garden of the Beasts, Erik Larsen
POETRY
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser (poetry)
Here, Bullet, Brian Turner
Necessary Light, Patricia Fargnoli
This Bed Our Bodies Shaped, April Lindner
Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher
Fast Animal, Tim Siebles (April 2015)
They, Sue Ellen Thompson, (December 2015)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
We Live in Water, Jess Walters
The Queen of the Tambourine, Jane Gardam
The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannary O’ Connor
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
We Live in Water, Jess Walters (July 2016)
Angel On My Chest, Leslie Pietrzyk (March 2016)
NOVELS
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai.
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn
The Green Road, Anne Enright
My Antonia, Willa Cather
The Speed of Light, ELizabeth ROsner
How Starbucks Saved my Life, Michael Gates
Silver Girl, Leslie Pietrzyk
Me Before You, Jo Jo Moyes.
The Turner House, Angela Flournoy.
The Animals, Christian Kiefer
Station 11, Emily St. John Mandel.
A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler.
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, Chris Cleeve
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
Mayhem. Robert Janes
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Transatlantic, Colum McCann (2016)
The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Kahajan
Vanessa and her Sister, Priya Parmor
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’ Nan (May 2016)
Worth Dying For, Lee Child,
Euphoria, Lily King.
All the Light We Cannot See,Anthony Doerr.
Trans-Sister Radio, Chris Bohjahan.
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
An Officer and a Spy
Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks
The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister,
City of Light, Lauren Belfer
Kindred, Olivia Butler
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
In the Deep Mid-Winter, Robert Clark
Little Bee, Chris Cleve
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald
In the Woods, Tana French
Hide, Lisa Gardner
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
A Lazarus Project Aleksandar Hemon
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
Someone Else’s Love Story, Joshilyn Jackson
The Dead, James Joyce
A Short History of Tractors in Ukraine, Marina Lewycka
I’d Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman
Martin Dressler, Steven Milhauser
The Husband’s Secret, Liane Moriarity
The Paris Wife, Paula McCain
The Giant’s House, Elizabeth McCracken
Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
Skin of the Lion, Michael Ondaatje
The Cats Table, Michael Ondaatje
Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips
The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
Every Last One, Anna Quindlan
Look Again, Lisa Scottoline
Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
Crossing to Safety, Wallage Stegner
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Evening, Susan Minot
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kunder
PLAYS
The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Location in Tom’s weekly email
RBWG Book Club Selections Jun- Nov 2019
June 20 Educated by Tara Westover. I was fascinated by both Westover's life story and her writing, and this was the first book I read in a long time that I couldn't put down. The author reports how she and her siblings lived in an isolated world with a paranoid father, an enabling mother, and very little access to education or technology in rural Idaho. I admired her ability to report so honestly on many embarrassing, hurtful details and her ability to use shorter chapters and a poetry-like attention to small, clear moments. This book enthralled me because hope shines through, and I think it would lead to a helpful discussion on nonfiction craft and a new appreciation about what it means to be educated. (Ethan Joella) Kathy Winfield
July 18 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen. Number 1 NYT best seller list fiction, a compelling tale of young abandoned child’s survival in a marsh of coastal North Carolina. (Joan Hartogs) Renay Regardie
August 15 Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy (novel). I had never read anything by this author although she has a great reputation. This book surprised me—the “masterwork of plot” as Ann Patchett calls it, kept me turning the pages and I liked that beneath the suspense there were larger issues at play about class and privilege. As writers, I think we could have a great discussion around the many points of view, which on one hand, kept the story going, but do we need them all? Why do writers choose to shift POV when they do? How does it help and hurt? Overall, a great story with a lot of writing choices to discuss. (Maribeth Fischer) Sarah Barnett
September 19 Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro. Because she writes so beautifully, says a great deal in each sentence. You don't feel the need to skip over anything. I love short stories and she is a master. (Ann Nolan and Carol Bruce) Joanne Sinsheimer
October 17 Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson (novel). This first novel by a 72-year old woman, written in the form of letters, is smart, beautifully written, and stylistically clever. the novel chronicles the correspondence between a lonely farm wife and the curator at the museum where the Tollund Man resides. (This was the naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 4th century BC, and was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body. He who was the subject of a famous poem by Seamus Heaney.) As the two begin writing letters to one another—at first mostly informational—they find that they have a ton in common and begin to share their lives through letters. For us, as writers and readers, the form itself gives us a lot to talk about, but a novel written in letters also deals very explicitly with voice—not only the different voices/styles of the letter writers, but the way those voices change as the relationship deepens. I loved that this was a first novel by a seventy-two year old, that it was so charming—a word I don't often use—and that the characters, in a short time and a short novel, were so fully developed—their histories, their families, their cares, passions, and secrets. And I liked the questions it asked about what makes a life satisfying. (Maribeth Fischer) Ginny Daly
November 21 Inheritance by Dani Shapiro (memoir). I never would have read this book because I was not interested in the subject—it felt old, cliched: a woman gets a DNA test and discovers her father is not her father. But I like Dani Shapiro as a writer—she is smart, literary, brings other references and sources into her memoirs—and so I grabbed it. I am so glad I did. I could not put it down. I looked forward to it. Beautifully paced, I am curious about how she structured this, how she kept my interest, how she is able to write compelling and emotional memoir that does not feel like wallowing in me, me, me. (Maribeth Fischer) Linda Federman
Books We Have Read Since April 2009
NONFICTION
Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson. (Rehoboth Reads chosen book)
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison (creative nonfiction)
The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown (August 2016)
I Could Tell you Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory.Before Night Falls, Patricia Hampl,
Winter Journal, Paul Auster
For the Time Being, Annie Dillard
She’s Not There, Jennifer Finley-Boylan
The Big Sea. Langston Hughes
Local Wonders, Ted Kooser
Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
Everybody Was so Young: The Love Story of Gerald and Sara Murphy, Amanda Viall
The Suicide Index, Joan Wickersham
Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World. Anthony Doerr
Wild. Cheryl Strayed
Let Me Finish, Richard Angell
In the Garden of the Beasts, Erik Larsen
POETRY
Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser (poetry)
Here, Bullet, Brian Turner
Necessary Light, Patricia Fargnoli
This Bed Our Bodies Shaped, April Lindner
Kettle Bottom, Diane Gilliam Fisher
Fast Animal, Tim Siebles (April 2015)
They, Sue Ellen Thompson, (December 2015)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
We Live in Water, Jess Walters
The Queen of the Tambourine, Jane Gardam
The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannary O’ Connor
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
We Live in Water, Jess Walters (July 2016)
Angel On My Chest, Leslie Pietrzyk (March 2016)
NOVELS
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai.
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn
The Green Road, Anne Enright
My Antonia, Willa Cather
The Speed of Light, ELizabeth ROsner
How Starbucks Saved my Life, Michael Gates
Silver Girl, Leslie Pietrzyk
Me Before You, Jo Jo Moyes.
The Turner House, Angela Flournoy.
The Animals, Christian Kiefer
Station 11, Emily St. John Mandel.
A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler.
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, Chris Cleeve
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
Mayhem. Robert Janes
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Transatlantic, Colum McCann (2016)
The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Kahajan
Vanessa and her Sister, Priya Parmor
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’ Nan (May 2016)
Worth Dying For, Lee Child,
Euphoria, Lily King.
All the Light We Cannot See,Anthony Doerr.
Trans-Sister Radio, Chris Bohjahan.
Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
An Officer and a Spy
Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks
The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister,
City of Light, Lauren Belfer
Kindred, Olivia Butler
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
In the Deep Mid-Winter, Robert Clark
Little Bee, Chris Cleve
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Michael Dorris
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald
In the Woods, Tana French
Hide, Lisa Gardner
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
A Lazarus Project Aleksandar Hemon
And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini
Someone Else’s Love Story, Joshilyn Jackson
The Dead, James Joyce
A Short History of Tractors in Ukraine, Marina Lewycka
I’d Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman
Martin Dressler, Steven Milhauser
The Husband’s Secret, Liane Moriarity
The Paris Wife, Paula McCain
The Giant’s House, Elizabeth McCracken
Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
Skin of the Lion, Michael Ondaatje
The Cats Table, Michael Ondaatje
Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips
The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
Every Last One, Anna Quindlan
Look Again, Lisa Scottoline
Rules of Civility, Amor Towles
Crossing to Safety, Wallage Stegner
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
Evening, Susan Minot
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kunder
PLAYS
The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
Copyright © Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild
