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September 2026 Bookclub Discussion: The Correspondent — Virginia Evans
Sun, Sep 27, 7:00 PM**📚 Our September Book Has Been Chosen!** Thanks to everyone who voted! Our next **Books & Brew** read is: ***The Correspondent — Virginia Evans*** Grab a copy, start reading, and join us for a great conversation! **About the Book** Sybil Van Antwerp has spent much of her life putting pen to paper. Through letters exchanged with family, friends, authors, and strangers, she shares her thoughts, frustrations, memories, and the pieces of herself that can sometimes be easier to express in writing than face-to-face. Told entirely through correspondence, *The Correspondent* gradually reveals the story of a complicated, sharp-witted woman confronting the relationships, regrets, and losses that have shaped her life. Warm, reflective, and deeply human, the novel explores connection, forgiveness, grief, and the ways we continue to grow and understand ourselves—even when we think we already know our own story. ────────── 📸 Follow us on Instagram **@booksandbrew_oakland** for meetup photos, book announcements, and future events.

David Foster Wallace on Irony, Television, and Sincerity
Thu, Oct 8, 1:00 AMIn *E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction*, David Foster Wallace examines the strange relationship between television, irony, and contemporary American culture. Television, he argues, became extraordinarily good at absorbing the attitudes once used to criticize it: self-awareness, cynicism, parody, and knowing detachment. The result is a culture in which being sophisticated increasingly means anticipating every possible criticism of yourself before anyone else can make it. Irony gives us a way to avoid being naive, but it can also make sincerity, commitment, and genuine belief feel embarrassing. Wallace is ostensibly writing about television and fiction in the early 1990s, but the essay reads remarkably well as an account of the culture that followed: advertising that mocks advertising, brands that joke about being brands, and online personalities who seem permanently aware of how they are being perceived. We’ll use the essay to ask what happens when criticism itself becomes part of the system it is meant to criticize. Can irony still function as a form of resistance once everyone speaks its language? And if detachment has become the default posture of modern culture, what would it mean to communicate sincerely without simply becoming naive? the reading can be found [here](https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf)

Book Club: "The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise" by Colleen Oakley
Fri, Sep 25, 1:30 AMAfter such a serious book in August, let's go for a lighthearted and fun read in September - we'll discuss "The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise" by Colleen Oakley. There are several copies available at the library as well as the audiobook so it should be easy to get! The location is TBD but will be in the Burlingame/San Mateo/Foster City area. We'll decide after the August meeting! Everyone will be waitlisted initially. Priority will be given to previous attendees of book club and regular attendees of the group. For details on attendance & waitlist, please see the "About us" description for the group. **Book Summary - "The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise" by Colleen Oakley** Publication Year: 2023 Page Count: 337 21-year-old Tanner Quimby needs a place to live. Preferably one where she can continue sitting around in sweatpants and playing video games nineteen hours a day. Since she has no credit or money to speak of, her options are limited, so when an opportunity to work as a live-in caregiver for an elderly woman falls into her lap, she takes it. One slip on the rug. That’s all it took for Louise Wilt’s daughter to demand that Louise have a full-time nanny living with her. Never mind that she can still walk fine, finish her daily crossword puzzle, and pour the two fingers of vodka she drinks every afternoon. Bottom line: Louise wants a caretaker even less than Tanner wants to be one. The two start off their living arrangement happily ignoring each other until Tanner starts to notice things—weird things. Like, why does Louise keep her garden shed locked up tighter than a prison? And why is the local news fixated on the suspect of one of the biggest jewelry heists in American history who looks eerily like Louise? And why does Louise suddenly appear in her room, with a packed bag at 1 a.m. insisting that they leave town immediately? Thus begins the story of a not-to-be-underestimated elderly woman and an aimless young woman who—if they can outrun the mistakes of their past—might just have the greatest adventure of their lives.

East Bay Women's Book Club September Meetup: The Correspondent
Thu, Sep 17, 2:00 AMHello, fellow female readers -- The book for the September Meetup is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans For those of you who are new, I will send out the address to my house by Monday, August 14. Looking forward to gathering together and discussing the book. Bonnie
Read/Discuss: Babel by RF Kuang
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