DISCUSSION GUIDES

Summary: In the classic first novel of the epic Aubrey/Maturin series, widely considered “the best historical novels ever written” (Richard Snow, New York Times), brilliant but down-on-his-luck physician, Stephen Maturin, introduces himself to ardent, gregarious British naval officer Jack Aubrey by way of a hard elbow to the ribs in the middle of a chamber music recital. Luckily for millions of series fans, the two reconcile and embark on the adventure of a lifetime that sees them through the thrilling perils of the Napoleonic Wars.

Summary: Stephanie Gangi’s novel, Carry the Dog, sweeps readers into Bea Seger’s Manhattan life in a story that pulses with rock ‘n’ roll, insight, and wit. After years of avoiding her past and her artist mother’s infamous, nude photos of Bea and her brothers, Bea must make a choice of whether to let the world in—and be compensated for the trauma of her childhood—or leave it all locked away in a storage unit forever.

Summary: This New York Times Bestseller, shows there’s no more hiding or people-pleasing up in here, sisters. No more being sidelined in your own life. It is time for us to be brave, to claim our gifts and quirks and emotions. You are set free and set up and set on fire.

Summary: This extraordinary work of investigative journalism by Jon Krakauer takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities, where some 40,000 people still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.

Summary: In this debut novel, a sweet but uptight single mom falls for an older man at an Alzheimer’s facility where her mother—and his wife—are patients.

Summary: Happy Hour is a book that could easily be dismissed as a boozy, hedonistic memoir of a summer. Yet “being easily dismissed” is precisely what it’s about. In an interview with the literary site Hazlitt, Marlowe Granados describes her impulse to write it: “I always wanted to write a book from the perspective of the type of girls who are always being observed but never seem to be making their own observations.” Elsewhere, she characterizes it differently: “Gala and Isa,” the girls in question, “want to have some sort of legacy, to have had a say in how they are perceived.” One of the lessons of Happy Hour is that beauty and luxury are not the same as excess and decadence. Gala and Isa are party girls, but they’re not rich. They weave a brocade of gem-like moments in 2013 New York where others would swipe a credit card and forget. Their lives are not the cynical exploitation of men nor the punishment of vain, “superficial,” or desperate women. They want to savor their existence: “to savor,” Isa says, “is to hold something...for more than a moment, to linger and draw out its details. Sometimes you are far too hungry to wait, and things get lost.” So you write them down to remember what your life consisted of. Your book club question: what gives fun meaning for Isa and Gala? Don’t dismiss that question with an easy answer. Work through some of the others below.

Summary: Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young―but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Summary: The Book of Atlantis Black will have you questioning facts, rooting for secrets, and asking what it means to know the truth.

Summary: Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and―at the same time―an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.

Summary: Honest, warm, and witty, this memoir reads like a chat with a dear friend sharing her insight and her vulnerabilities and taking us along as she heals. Complete with family stories over cocktails and a new friend named Claude, who happens to be a praying mantis.