Book Club for Writers
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How does the Writers’ Book Club 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 2018
Jan: The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Janet Malcolm
Feb: Benediction, Kent Haruf (Katherine Gekker & Sharon Hoover)
Mar: Anything is Possible, Elizabeth Strout. (Ethan Joella)
Apr: Mayweed, Frannie Lindsay. [POETRY] (Ethan Joella)
May: Silver Girl, Leslie Pietrzyk; Ginny Daly host
Like This Angel on My Chest, which we read in book club, Leslie continues to play with form and chronology, this time in a novel. The chapters are not in chronological order (and I’d love to discuss that) and many, in fact, were started as prompts in something similar to our Free Writes, which might be its own interesting topic of discussion. Leslie is superb at character development, at writing very flawed characters, and her choice of detail to ground a scene is stunning. That said--I should warn the men in the group who are voting: this does center around college girls in the 1980’s.
June 21: How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill (8 votes)
The Starbucks Book is pure entertainment, but also some good observations about our assumptions about other people, demographics, etc. (Irene Fick)
July 19: The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner (15 votes)
This is a great example of a novel written by a poet. Her use of language is beautiful. Written in three voices (the interweaving stories of an introverted brother, world-class opera singing sister, and their housekeeper) the novel is told linearly in first person from each character's point of view. Moments from each person’s past are revealed in short fragments. Rosner uses scientific definitions to open several of the short chapters, and the definitions work well as metaphor and add another layer to the what is happening with the characters. (Gail Comorat)
August 16: My Antonia by Willa Cather (10 votes); Carl Thompson host
Some time ago, someone suggested that we might want to read a "classic" now and then. I wonder about My Antonia, a novel that rests very much on setting and character, two of the things Maribeth has been talking about lately in classes. It has been criticized for its lack of plot. Nevertheless, it is considered a major American novel. (Sharon Hoover)
September 20: The Green Road by Anne Enright (10 votes)
Award-winning Irish novelist writes about a family of four children, from childhood to adulthood, and their mother. Beautiful prose, rich explorations of their complex lives and personalities, but told with such amazing restraint and discipline. Lovely descriptions of western Ireland, its people and culture, and the children’s lives in New York City, Africa, Dublin, but, again, with restraint, discipline. An added bonus: Enright uses the first person plural at times, but not everywhere. I’m still not sure how she manages that, but it’s wonderful. (Katherine Gekker)
October 18: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, by Nick Flynn; Linda Federman host
This story, which was made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro, is poet Nick Flynn’s recounting of his troubled relationship with his father, who after abandoning his family when Nick was young, shows up as a homeless man in the shelter where Flynn was then working. But the story isn’t why I suggest it. Flynn, who is a poet, writes beautifully and each short chapter is written in a unique style--sometimes in second person, or as list of Truths and lies, in the fashion of a Harper’s Index, as a list of things drunks (which has father was) say. A unique way of writing a compelling story without getting caught in the chronological trap of “and this happened” that all too many memoirs fall into. (Maribeth Fischer)
Books We Have Read Since April 2009
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
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
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