The Book Club

Here's what we've read and discussed:

• James, by Percival Everett
• My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante
• Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen 
• I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir, by Harvey Fierstein
• An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• The Women, by Kristin Hannah 
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh
• Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love, by David Talbot
• Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett
• Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
• The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality, by Angela Saini 
• Nobody's Fool, by Richard Russo
• An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong
• Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
• Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler
• The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
• The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles
• Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead 
• tick, tick ... BOOM!, by Jonathan Larson
• Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell
• Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro 
• The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
• The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson 

Here's What We're Reading

Greater Niles Village Book Club: Classic literature or latest best seller, fiction or non-fiction, participate in lively discussion whether or not you have read the book. Meetings are listed on GNV Calendar.

These Villagers shared their reading suggestions—send us yours!

Cindy McIntyre:

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Leadership by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

Patrice Varga:
My top pick for the pandemic is the Rivers of London series (aka the Peter Grant series) by Ben Aaronovitch.  I think of it as Harry Potter for grown-ups, rich in details, wonderful characters, and great writing. Each book is like a trip to London, and you’ll learn a lot of British vernacular. I highly recommend the audiobooks. The narrator, Kobna Holbrook-Smith, is a top talent--on par with Jim Dale. He reads the first book at bit fast, but, after that, his pace is perfect.

Judy Roudman:
I’m reading The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. England during the Blitz (one year). Based on research of letters, diaries and facts. Entertaining. 

Margery Leonard:
Beach Read Fiction: The Lincoln Lawyer or The Last Coyote (Michael Connelly)
Poetry: anything by Billy Collins, particularly The Lanyard
Classic: The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Nonfiction: Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World (Linda Horseman)

Kathy Steel-Sabo:
The Honey Bus: a Memoir of Loss, Courage, and a Girl Saved by Bees by Meredith Mayk 

Penne Field-Feinberg:
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present in the Life You Have by Mark Nepo. It was originally published in 2000 and has come out in a hardcover edition for the 20th anniversary. It is one of Oprah’s 7 super-soulful reads. “It is a collection of reflections in a year’s supply of gentle daily wake-up calls. Like most of us he has thought a lot about the meaning of life, but because he is a poet, a philosopher and a cancer survivor, his insights are special and beautifully expressed.” -Oprah Winfrey.

Sue Meadows:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski—on an extraordinary journey, canine characters as memorable as human ones.

Iris Nicholson:
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. The novel follows Sarah Grimke and her enslaved handmaid, Hetti "Handful" Grimke, through 35 years as they each struggle to make lives of their own choosing despite the terrible constraints imposed on enslaved persons and women. The novel is based on the lives of the Grimke sisters who were nationally-known American female advocates of the abolition of slavery and women's rights in the early and mid 1800's.
The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.  The novel has no plot in the usual sense,  it's an  account of Japanese mail-order brides who immigrated to the US and married men they had not met.  The novel is  told in the first person plural from the point of view of many girls and women , none of whom is individualized as a continuing character, but all of whom are vividly described in a sentence or two.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize winner.  The novel follows Cora a 15-year-old runaway slave. From Good Reads: "In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom."

Other recommendations:

• The President Is Missing by James Patterson & Bill Clinton
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
• A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
• Evicted by Matthew Desmond
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Killers by David Grann
• Little Fires Everywhere: A Novel by Celeste Ng