A Berkeley Book Club
- Who: We're a book club that's been meeting for several years, always happy to have
additional members, any gender.
- What: We read mostly modern fiction, but we're also open to
some non-fiction or classics. We try to choose books that are available
in paperback and in local libraries.
- When & Where: We meet monthly at Au Coquelet Cafe
(corner of Milvia & University) in Berkeley one evening per month at 7
pm -- look for the table(s) with the book on display. (We usually sit
in the back part of the restaurant, so check there if you don't see us
in the front part.)
- Current Selection:
Our next meeting will be at
7:00 p.m. on
Monday,
January 9
,
to discuss
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss.
- Next Up: ??
- How: Future book and meeting dates are chosen at each meeting
by the attending members, so bring book suggestions and your calendar!
- Possible Future selections:
-
Other Questions? Send email to
greetingshuber -at- yahoo /dot/ com. Or
feel free to just read the book and show up!
- Past Selections:
-
East of the West: A Country in Stories,
by Miroslav Penkov.
-
The Naked Lady That Stood On Her Head: A Physiatrist's Stories of His Most Bizarre
Cases, by Gary Small.
-
This Is Where I Leave You, by Jonathan Tropper.
- The Girl In The Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman.
(You may also want to watch the old movie Rear Window for comparison.)
-
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato.
-
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.
-
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad.
- A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Other Stories, by Flannery O'Connor.
- Little Bee, by Chris Cleave.
- Clockers,
by Richard Price.
-
Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, by Jeannette Walls.
-
The Third Man, by Graham Green, with comparison of the book to the
Orson Welles movie.
- A bonus short book,
White Fang by Jack London.
-
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (first selection for Halloween).
-
Grimm's Fairy Tales: Twenty Stories, by
Jacob Grimm, illustrated by Arthur Rackham (second selection for Halloween).
-
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, by Abraham Verghese,
-
Tokyo Vice, by Jake Adelstein.
-
Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn.
-
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann.
- Two short books:
1) Mrs. Warren's Profession, by Bernard Shaw,
and
2) American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell.
-
Fool, by Christopher Moore, and
King Lear, by Shakespeare.
-
Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik.
-
The Unbearable Lightness of Being,
by Milan Kundera.
-
Something Missing,
by Matthew Dicks.
-
The Things They Carried,
by Tim O'Brien.
-
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf.
- The WhiteTiger, by Aravind Adiga.
- The House at Sugar Beach, by Helene Cooper.
- In
Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan.
-
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.
- The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike.
- The Outlander, by Gil Adamson.
-
Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote.
- Two small short story collections: (1)
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas,
and The Thanksgiving Visitor, by Truman
Capote, and (2)
Holidays On Ice, by David Sedaris.
- Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk.
- Steve Martin: A Comic's Life, by Steve Martin.
-
The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta.
- Miss American Pie, by
Margaret Sartor.
-
Angels, by Denis Johnson.
-
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to
Promote Peace... One School at a Time, by
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. (Also available at
Black Oak Books)
- Emma, by Jane Austen.
-
No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July.
-
After Dark (Hardcover), by Haruki Murakami.
- What is the What, by Dave Eggers.
- I Love You, Beth Cooper, by Larry Doyle.
- Gifts, by Nuruddin Farah.
-
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.
-
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers.
-
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen.
-
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai.
-
No God But God, by Reza Aslan.
-
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barak Obama.
-
The Zero, by Jess Walter.
-
Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie.
-
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life,
by Steven Johnson.
-
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell.
-
Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta.
-
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk.
-
The World to Come, by Dara Horn.
-
Motherless Brooklyn,
by Jonathan Lethem.
-
Fallen, by David Maine.
-
The Omnivore's Dilemma : A Natural History of Four Meals (Hardcover),
by Michael Pollan.
-
Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder.
-
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.
-
Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson.
-
The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde.
-
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
-
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis.
-
This is Not Civilization, by Robert Rosenberg.
-
The Preservationist, by David Maine.
-
My Forbidden Face, Growing up under the Taliban: A Young Woman's
Story, by Latifa.
-
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.
-
The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler.
-
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.
-
Easter Island, by Jennifer Vanderbes.
-
1906, by James Dalessandro.
-
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood.
-
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.
-
The Known World, by Edward Jones.
-
About Grace, by Anthony Doer.
- Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris.
- The Probable Future, by Alice Hoffman.
-
Global Woman, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild.
- Caramelo, by Sandra Cisneros.
- Against All Enemies, by Richard Clark.
-
The Importance of Being Ernest, by Oscar
Wilde.
(This selection was inspired by an Orinda
theater play selection for summer 2004.
For more information on
Cal Shakes, see
http://www.calshakes.org/ .)
-
The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown.
- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again,
by David Foster Wallace.
-
The Feast of Love, by Charles Baxter.
- The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth.
-
Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi.
-
That Old Ace in the Hole, by Annie Proulx.
-
Bel Canto, by Anne Patchett.
-
Reefer Madness:Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the Black Market,
by Eric Schlosser.
-
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,
by Gregory Maguire.
- Three Junes,
by Julia Glass.
-
Empire Falls,
by Richard Russo.
-
Atonement,
by Ian McEwan.
-
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Sijie Dai, and Ina Rilke (Translator).
- Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
- Enemy Women, by Paulette Jiles
- How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
- Happenstance, by Carol Shields