2018 Book Club Selections

Good grief, can you even believe that 2018 is just around the corner? Knowing Ann, she'll be ready to read the book for January before you know it so I thought I'd better get our list put together for 2018. I played around with a theme, like we've had for the past couple of years; but, in the end, I've decided our goal next year is just to read interesting books that will give us a lot to talk about and, hopefully, stretch our knowledge of the world a bit.

January: Kitchens of The Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
February: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (our classic)
March: Nora Webster by Colm Toibin
April: News of The World by Paulette Jiles
May: The Women In The Castle by Jessica Shattuck
June: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
July: open to leave us some flexibility
August: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
September: Eleanor and Hick by Susan Quinn (our nonfiction)
October: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel
November: The Wangs Versus The World
December: open for possible movie night

As always, our schedule will be somewhat flexible to allow for things like a great Omaha Reads book or something one of you thinks would make a great choice. I have left a couple of open spots, one for a planned movie night but we won't know when that will be until a movie of interest comes out.

These choice were all made based on reviews and feedback from my blogging friends but I have not read any of them. In 2018, my plan is to read the books a couple of months ahead of time. Once I've read the book, then I'll know for sure if we'll stick with that book. I don't want a repeat of Behind Closed Doors!

August, September and October

In August, we had our, now annual, trip to the theater to see the movie adaptation of a book we've read. Three of us and a guest went to see The Glass Castle, the adaptation of the book by the same name by Jeanette Walls, a book the club read before any of us had even joined the group. Only one of us had actually read the book; Lisa thought the filmmakers had done a great job, although it may even have been softened a bit. The others in attendance all thought they would not have been able to finish the book if they had started to read it; it is so hard to imagine someone growing up the way the Wall children grew up.

In September we read George Saunders' Lincoln In The Bardo, which recently won the Booker Prize. This is Lisa's favorite book of the year and a huge favorite of the critics, but it was not as universally loved by book club members. Ann didn't care for the structure of the book while Linda and Lisa thought that was one of the great things about the book. It did raise a lot of questions: how much of the "factual" narrative was, in fact, excerpts from real books, what is "the bardo," why could some of the people in the bardo move on and others couldn't. Despite some people having problems with the book's structure, it was still a good choice with a lot to discuss.

For October, we talked about Jonis Agee's The Bones of Paradise. This book was the choice of the Omaha Public Library for the Omaha Reads book for 2017. While all of us had problems with different aspects of the book, we all did enjoy it and there was a lot to talk about. Ann expressed a real interest in books set in the West in this time period (duly noted!) and we all learned a lot about the Wounded Knee Massacre. The dynamics of family, what is the value of land to a person, were there surprises in the book, the structure of this book (as it moved back and forth in time, in particular), and what we thought of the characters' character were all topics of discussion. Cheryl hosted this month and found a couple of books for us to look through that related to the novel that added a nice extra touch to our reading. We definitely recommend this book as a book club choice, even with its flaws.