Read Harder Book Group Recap: September
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We hosted our first round of IRL book groups in September in eight cities, and we had an absolute blast. Thanks so much to everyone who came out; and if you’re interested and live near one of our groups, you can mark your calendars for October.
Some attendees are working their way through the 2015 Read Harder challenge, while others were working their way through their TBR stacks. Our wonderful hosts took notes; please enjoy this list of titles that come recommended from group members!
Chicago:
- Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
- Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
- Beastly Bones, by William Ritter (sequel to Jackaby)
- Speak, Louisa Hall
- Adult Onset, Ann-Marie McDonald
- If You Could Be Mine, Sara Farizan
- Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography, Audre Lorde
Glasgow:
- Tales of the Unexpected, Roald Dahl
- Esio Trot (and the BBC TV adaptation) Roald Dahl
- Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan Novels (I think we all went away vowing to pick these up!)
New York City:
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
- Luna Park and Dreamland, Kevin Baker
- Slasher Girls & Monster Boys, April Genevieve Tucholke
- Take This Man, Brando Skyhorse
- The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagercrantz
- Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Karen Russell
- Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee
- Smaller and Smaller Circles, F. H. Bacan
- Night Film, Marisha Pessl
- Dear Mr. You, Mary-Louise Parker (November 10 2015)
- Not My Father’s Son, Alan Cumming
- The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
- The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
- The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
- Lucky Us, Amy Bloom
- The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth
Boston
- Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho
- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
- Beautiful Unbroken, Mary Jane Nealon
- The Second Mango, Shira Glassman
- Viper Wine, Hermione Eyre
- Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
- The Lightning Queen, Laura Resau (October 27 2015)
- The Fold, Peter Clines
- Black Chalk, Christopher J. Yates
- Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
- Half-Resurrection Blues, Daniel Jose Older
- Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo
- Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Cape Cod, William Martin
- The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante
- Girl at War, Sara Novic
- The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver Burkeman
- Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
Houston
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami
- The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker
- Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul Jabar
- To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
- Nicolai Gogol (really anything)
Washington, D.C. (a more topics oriented group)
- How do you track reading? (Most common answer: spreadsheets)
- What books are worth re-reading? This also led to a conversation about books we don’t feel the need to re-read, because we recognize they were of a certain moment/time in our lives, and we might not recapture the magic.
- We talked about retellings, like March by Geraldine Brooks Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle’s
- Lots of poetry readers in attendance! We talked about various poets and how some texts are meant to be read aloud.
- the works of Stephen King
- In the Woods, Tana French
- Superzelda, Tiziana Lo Porto and Daniele Marotta
- We also talked about the merits of audiobooks, and which genre is better to run to. (Consensus: narrative nonfiction)
Los Angeles, CA
- Devil in the White City, Erik Larson
- Valor: A Comic Anthology
- A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
- House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
- Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins
- The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker