Bookish Girls Fremont Book Club

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➡️ Host Instagram @damanreads 📱
➡️ To support, buy the host a coffee HERE ☕
⚠️ A 3-day cancellation notice is required. Late cancellations and missed attendance will both be marked as a no-show. Repeated no-shows will restrict future event registration.
⚠️ Book clubs with fewer than 5 signups may be rescheduled or cancelled to ensure a quality discussion experience.
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About the book
For the last decade, as she’s spent countless hours in doctor’s waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of Lena Dunham’s body has felt, as she puts it, “like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight.” It’s not easy dragging a wrecked car anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lamé corset. Or to the set of the hit show that you—as a twenty-five-year-old—are writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House, the Golden Globes, or your publicist’s office to discuss the latest internet disaster. But Dunham does it—even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she’s meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her—because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again—if only she could remember who that self was.

As Dunham takes us through her journey, tracking her rise to fame—from selling the pilot of Girls to the present—in three acts, it becomes clear that the spotlight casts long shadows, distorting the relationships she once held dear and isolating everyone in its glare. When an endless supply of drugs can’t protect you from pain—and begins to control your every move—being famous doesn’t stand a chance against the darker corners of the human experience.

In Famesick, Dunham asks herself what the cost of fulfilling her dreams has really been, and whether it was worth it. What she finds is deeper than physical relief, and more lasting, as she learns to live with what she can’t change and turn her regrets into wisdom that can carry her forward, as she reconnects to what, and who, she loves.

➡️ Host Instagram @damanreads 📱
➡️ To support, buy the host a coffee HERE ☕

⚠️ A 3-day cancellation notice is required. Late cancellations and missed attendance will both be marked as a no-show. Repeated no-shows will restrict future event registration.

⚠️ Book clubs with fewer than 5 signups may be rescheduled or cancelled to ensure a quality discussion experience.

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About the book
'I am Rani Jindan, Mother of the Khalsa. That is my identity. That is my fate.' Daughter of the royal kennel keeper, the beautiful Jindan Kaur went on to become Maharaja Ranjit Singh's youngest and last queen; his favourite. She became regent when her son Dalip, barely six years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, passionate, and dedicated to protecting her son's heritage, Jindan distrusted the British and fought hard to keep them from annexing Punjab. Defying tradition, she stepped out of the zenana, cast aside the veil and conducted state business in public. Addressing her Khalsa troops herself, she inspired her men in two wars against the 'firangs'. Her power and influence were so formidable that the British, fearing an uprising, robbed the rebel queen of everything she had, including her son. She was imprisoned and exiled. But that did not crush her indomitable will. An exquisite love story of a king and a commoner, a cautionary tale about loyalty and betrayal, and a powerful parable of the indestructible bond between mother and child, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's unforgettable novel brings alive one of the most fearless women of the nineteenth century, an inspiration for our times.

➡️ Host Instagram @damanreads 📱
➡️ To support, buy the host a coffee HERE ☕

⚠️ A 3-day cancellation notice is required. Late cancellations and missed attendance will both be marked as a no-show. Repeated no-shows will restrict future event registration.

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Organizing these meetups takes time and effort. If you’d like to support the organizer, donations are always appreciated but never required. Donations can be made on the meetup page or you can buy the host a coffee ☕

➡️ Host Instagram @damanreads 📱
➡️ To support, buy the host a coffee HERE ☕

⚠️ A 3-day cancellation notice is required. Late cancellations and missed attendance will both be marked as a no-show. Repeated no-shows will restrict future event registration.

⚠️ Book clubs with fewer than 5 signups may be rescheduled or cancelled to ensure a quality discussion experience.

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About the book
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family. What’s the truth? Depends on who you ask.
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. Prosperous, rich, happy. They came to this country as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighborhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye.
When an unthinkable tragedy strikes, everyone is left reeling and the family is thrust into the court of public opinion. There is talk that behind closed doors the Sharafs’ happy household was anything but. Did the Sharaf family achieve the American dream? Or was the image of the model immigrant family just a façade?
Like a literary game of ping-pong, Good People compels the reader to reconsider what might have happened even on the previous page. Told through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, it is a riveting, provocative, and haunting story of family—sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, and the communities that claim us as family in difficult times.