I started a reading club in Philadelphia that first met in October 1988, with four people. We met (and they continue to meet) in one another’s homes for a potluck dinner followed by discussion. The host picks the next book. In 1995 we decided to try having broad themes in an attempt to improve the quality of our discussions, which has varied widely over time. In general, the themes have helped the discussions. Following is a list of the books we read up to the time I moved to Boston. This isn’t a definitive list, as we weren’t the best at record-keeping. It took several years, after all, before we realized we were creating a tradition.
Books by year
Books by theme
- France
- Journeys
- Religion
- The time between the wars
- Ancestors
- Slavery
- Reading
- Southern writers writing about the South
- Places you’ve lived
- Books chosen in pairs
- African authors
The books
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Shikasta by Doris Lessing
The Coup by John Updike
The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol
The Well of Loneliness by Radcliffe Hall
Natural Enemies by Jane Langton
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Delicacy and Strength of Lace by Leslie Silko and James Wright
Under the Eye of the Clock by Christopher Nolan
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston
The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge
The Power of Silence by Carlos Castaneda
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe
Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes by Maya Angelou
1991
Eco-Warriors by Rik Scarce
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
A Midwife’s Tale by Martha Ballard and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
1992
My Son’s Story by Nadine Gordimer
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Street Lives by Stephen Vanderstay
Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
A Prayer for Owen Meanie by John Irving
1993
A Natural History of the Senses by Dianne Ackerman
In Evil Hour by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Measure of My Days by Florida Maxwell Scott
A Cordial Water by M.F.K. Fisher
Women Respond to the Men’s Movement
No Name in the Street by James Baldwin
Sex, Art, and American Culture by Camille Paglia
1994
Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
A Chorus of Stones by Susan Griffin
The Last Magician by Janett Turner Hospital
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Nicholas Hoeg
1995
France (our first theme)
La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils
César Birotteau by Honore de Balzac
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Journeys
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1996
The Log of the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
Mutant Message Down Under by Margo Morgan
Religion
God, a Biography by Jack Miles
A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
Muhammed: A Biography of the Prophet by Karen Armstrong
The Book of J by Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg
1997
The time between the wars
Autobiography of Alice. B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Emma Goldman in Exile: From the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War by Alice Wexler
Death in Venice and other short stories by Thomas Mann
This I Remember by Eleanor Roosevelt
Derby Dugan’s Depression Funnies by Tom de Haven
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Ancestors
Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca
A Tousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1998
Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvag
A Fatal Light by Richard Currey
Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman
Slavery
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass (or Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or Life and Times of Frederick Douglass)
Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula LeGuin
Amistad by Alex Pate or David Pesci
Reading
A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel (Tenth Anniversary of Group)
1999
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkirts
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Southern writers writing about the South
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
2000
Places you’ve lived
Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party by George R. Stewart (I’m from California.)
Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin by Alice Echols (Barbara lived in Northern California in the ’60s.)
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (Todd lived in Florida.)
The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick (Gayle lived in Manhattan.)
Boys Like Us by Peter McGehee (Liz is from Arkansas.)
Living the Dream: A Documentary Study of Twin Oaks Community by Ingrid Komar (Taylor was part of Twin Oaks for ten years.)
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (Lucy lived in Nebraska.)
I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates (Linda grew up in upstate New York.)
A book chosen by lottery (because we were having trouble picking a theme):
2001
Pairs of books chosen by pairs of people
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding