The Book Club is on Summer hiatus.
The next meeting of the CUMC Book Club will be
Monday, Sept 23rd at 12:30pm in the Fireside Room.
(Bring your lunch along if you like!)
At each session’s first meeting in September, everyone brings books that we recommend to the group for the upcoming session. We then have the difficult task of selecting only 7 or 8 (as we read the Silicon Valley Reads selections during February)!
ALL readers & book-worms are welcome!
The Book Club meets every 4th Monday 12:30 – 2:00pm from September through June on the Campbell UMC Campus – in the Fireside Room. We can also zoom you in to the meeting if you’d like and are unable to attend in person!
At each session’s first meeting in September, everyone brings books that we recommend to the group for the upcoming session. We then have the difficult task of selecting only 7 or 8 (as we read the Silicon Valley Reads selections during February)! ALL readers & book-worms are welcome!
You can also see the complete lists (with descriptions) of member recommendations for the following sessions: 2022-2023, 2021-2022, 2020-2021, 2019-2020, 2018-19, 2017-18, and 2016-17.
(These lists/descriptions include books suggested, but not selected for that particular session – good ideas for further reading).
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Book choices include biographies/memoirs, histories, fiction, and soul-enriching experiences.
We’ve learned about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the way west with Lewis and Clark, stories of courage, adventure, and tragedy, and even how such enterprises as the US Post Office created America and how the “space race” brought about our 21st-Century technologies!
We enjoy new titles and discover fascinating new worlds as introduced to us by fellow readers.
We attempt to select books that are available at local library systems such as San Jose Public Library, Santa Clara Cty Library and others. (Audio and eBooks are readily available now too).
We always include the Silicon Valley Reads selections for our February selection.
Come and join this book-oriented small group that enjoys reading and learning together.
Everyone is welcome!
—————————— Upcoming Months’ Selections ——————————
(Upcoming Titles fall under this section, then move to previous selections after the meetings.)
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SUMMERTIME!
Find and read some new books
to recommend to the group for the next session,
which will be September 2024 – June 2025.
Bring your suggestions along to the September meeting.
Happy Summer Reading!
Next Meeting: Sept 23rd, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
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——————————— Previous Months’ Selections ———————————
(Titles fall under this section as we meet & complete the books.)
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June 2024 – Trust by Hernan Diaz
Meeting: June 24th, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, NY Times Bestseller
Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
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May 2024 – American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the
Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics by Kevin Hazzard
Meeting: May 27th, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local funeral home. But that all changed with Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America’s first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their story and their legacy erased—until now.
In American Sirens, acclaimed journalist and paramedic Kevin Hazzard tells the dramatic story of how a group of young, undereducated Black men forged a new frontier of healthcare. He follows a rich cast of characters that includes John Moon, an orphan who found his calling as a paramedic; Peter Safar, the Nobel Prize-nominated physician who invented CPR and realized his vision for a trained ambulance service; and Nancy Caroline, the idealistic young doctor who turned a scrappy team into an international leader. At every turn, Freedom House battled racism—from the community, the police, and the government. Their job was grueling, the rules made up as they went along, their mandate nearly impossible—and yet despite the long odds and fierce opposition, they succeeded spectacularly. Never-before revealed in full, this is a rich and troubling hidden history of the Black origins of America’s paramedics, a special band of dedicated essential workers, who stand ready to serve day and night on the line between life and death for every one of us.
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April 2024 – Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel by Bonnie Garmus
Meeting: April 22nd, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *
Meet Elizabeth Zott: “a gifted research chemist, absurdly self-assured and immune to social convention” (The Washington Post) in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show.
*now an APPLE TV+ Series
This novel is “irresistible, satisfying and full of fuel” (The NYT Review) and “witty, sometimes hilarious…the Catch-22 of early feminism” (Stephen King).
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.
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March 2024 – The Last Ride of the Pony Express:
My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West by Will Grant
Meeting: March 25th, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
The Pony Express was a fast-horse frontier mail service that spanned the American West— the high, dry, and undeniably lonesome part of North America. While in operation during the 1860s, it carried letter mail on a blistering ten-day schedule between Missouri and San Francisco, running through a vast and mostly uninhabited wilderness. It covered a massive distance—akin to running horses between Madrid and Moscow— and to this day, the Pony Express is irrefutably the greatest display of American horsemanship to ever color the pages of a history book.
Though the Pony Express has enjoyed a lot of traction over the years, among the authors that have attempted to encapsulate it, none have ever ridden it themselves. While most scholars would look for answers inside a library, Will Grant looks for his between the ears of a horse. Inspired by the likes of Mark Twain, Sir Richard Burton, and Horace Greeley, all of whom traveled throughout the developing West, Will Grant returned to his roots: he would ride the trail himself with his two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, from one end to the other.
Cowboy and journalist Will Grant takes us on an epic and authentic horseback journey into the modern West on an adventure of a lifetime. The Last Ride of the Pony Express boldly illuminates both our mythic fascination with the Pony Express, and how its spirit continues to this day.
This is a tale of adventure by a horseman who defies most modern conveniences, and is an unforgettable narrative that will forever change how you see the West, the Pony Express, and America as a whole.
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February 2024 – The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Silicon Valley Reads Book)
Meeting: February 26th, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
Of the three SVR books, we chose The Light Pirate as our selection to read for February. Set in a futuristic world where Florida faces the relentless onslaught of extreme weather and rising sea levels, “The Light Pirate” is the story of a small coastal town preparing for a powerful hurricane and follows Wanda—a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane—as she navigates a rapidly changing world. Divided into four parts—power, water, light, and time—this GMA Book Club pick novel mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the gradual transformation of the world as we know it. It serves as a contemplation of changes that challenge our comfort zones and a reminder of the untamed beauty and strength of nature.
Silicon Valley Reads focuses on stories of inspiration. The 2024 theme is “A Greener Tomorrow Starts Today” with meaningful stories and a combination of virtual and in-person events to engage and inspire the community.
Silicon Valley Reads is an annual community program that selects books focused on a contemporary theme and offers free events throughout Santa Clara County to engage the public in reading, thinking and discussing the topic. The goals are to encourage the love of reading and learning and to have a welcoming forum where our diverse community can come together to share different perspectives. Books for the year’s selected theme can be easily found at local library systems such as Santa Clara Cty Library and San Jose Public Library. (Audio and eBooks are readily available too).
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January 2024 – The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck
Meeting: January 22nd, 2024 – in the Fireside Room
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Winner of the PEN New England Award
“Enchanting…A book filled with so much love…Long before Oregon, Rinker Buck has convinced us that the best way to see America is from the seat of a covered wagon.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Absorbing…Winning…The many layers in The Oregon Trail are linked by Mr. Buck’s voice, which is alert and unpretentious in a manner that put me in mind of Bill Bryson’s comic tone in A Walk in the Woods.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
A major bestseller that has been hailed as a “quintessential American story” (Christian Science Monitor), Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail is an epic account of traveling the 2,000-mile length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way—in a covered wagon with a team of mules—that has captivated readers, critics, and booksellers from coast to coast. Simultaneously a majestic journey across the West, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga, Buck’s chronicle is a “laugh-out-loud masterpiece” (Willamette Week) that “so ensnares the emotions it becomes a tear-jerker at its close” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) and “will leave you daydreaming and hungry to see this land” (The Boston Globe).
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December 2023 – Enjoy the holidays and your families – start the next book! 😉
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November 2023 – Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Meeting: November 27th, 2023 – in the Fireside Room
An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner—a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past.
Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependant on others for his every need. Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture he retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.
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October 2023 – And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham
Meeting: October 23rd, 2023 – in the Fireside Room
A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations.
At once familiar and elusive, Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest of American presidents—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right.
This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end. In a nation shaped by the courage of the enslaved of the era and by the brave witness of Black Americans, Lincoln’s story illustrates the ways and means of politics in a democracy, the roots and durability of racism, and the capacity of conscience to shape events.
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*Book selections from the 2022-2023 session have moved here.
See more previous years’ book selections.