Read It Like You Mean It

May's book was suggested by Steve and accepted in March's book club.

It looks like an Iowan farming/family drama, plus it won the Pulitzer in 1992 - a perfect book to kick off the summer season in the midwest!

From Goodreads:
Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm—one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa—to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny, and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm—from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders. In this winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence of such a life with stark, painful detail.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.

I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing

June's book was suggested by Laura and accepted in Aprils book club.

A recently published (Nov 2025) queer love story, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The author has won some literary awards for her previous novels, she seems to have a knack for this sort of novel, historical dramatization fiction. Laura read it recently and recommended it based on her own experience.

From Goodreads:
It is September 1974. Two men meet in Venice. One, Nicholas, is a young artist, plausible, English, desperate. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the illusionist responsible for realizing the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young apprentice is just what he needs.

He brings Nicholas back to Rome and introduces him to the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. In the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.

But Nicholas has a secret, and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amid the rising tensions of the Years of Lead, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.

Olivia Laing's The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noir-ish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema. It is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.

I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing

June's book was suggested by Evan and Tanya and accepted in Aprils book club.

If there isn’t a margarita in this book I’ll be pissed, I don’t know how popular margs were in Soviet Russia…
Described as “an essential classic of modern Russian literature”. Searingly accurate portrayal of life in Soviet Russia, too accurate to publish until the 60s.
372 pages - has won a ton of awards - neat!

This will be at Michaels house for a sunmer cookout - thanks for volunteering Michael and we'll have more details on food as we get closer.

From Goodreads:
An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.
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Interested in suggesting a book? Bring it up to me at a meeting (or after by Meetup messages) and we can talk about it, if it sounds like it will fit I will add it to the list to be voted on by the group. There are some genre, content and page length restrictions but we're down to give most things a shot.

I have made a Google Doc that people can view to publicize the current set of suggestions see my notes on them. I've included an introduction to make it clear what I look for, how I suggest books and how to interact with the system.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bpxyKJlZC08MduYEdX8_uOBWu_FpIqJh2NxwFsMHfIA/edit?usp=sharing