Wednesday Afternoon Book Group

  • Wednesday Afternoon Book Group

Our Wednesday Afternoon Book Groups meets on the last Wednesday of every month from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in the Fireplace Room. We read both fiction and nonfiction.  Copies of each title are available at the Circulation Desk approximately one month prior to each meeting. Downloadable and audio editions are also made available whenever possible. New members are always welcome.

Registration is not required for in-person meetings, but is appreciated! Please register for each meeting separately, using our online calendar.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

2025

FEBRUARY 26

Daughters of Nantucket by Julie Gerstenblatt

Set against Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846, this sweeping, emotional novel brings together three courageous women battling to save everything they hold dear.

MARCH 26

Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womenhood by Margot Mifflin

Looking for Miss America is a fast-paced narrative history of the Miss America pageant from its start as a shocking east coast bathing-beauty revue in 1921 to its recent rebirth as a swimsuit-free “scholarship competition.” It introduces the dreamers and dissidents, hustlers and heroines who won; the celebrities, including Norman Rockwell, Joan Crawford, and Rod McKuen, who judged; and the masterminds behind it, like director Lenora Slaughter, who “picked the pageant up by its bathing suit straps and put it down in an evening gown” in the 1930s, transforming it from a seaside skin show into a national institution.

APRIL 30

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot  by Marianne Cronin

Life is short – no one knows that better than seventeen year-old Lenni Petterssen. On the Terminal Ward, the nurses are offering their condolences already, but Lenni still has plenty of living to do. When she meets 83-year-old Margot Macrae, a fellow patient offering new friendship and enviable artistic skills, Lenni’s life begins to soar in ways she’d never imagined.

MAY 28

The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life by Alex Trebek

In The Answer Is, Trebek combines illuminating personal anecdotes with his thoughts on a range of topics, including happiness, grief, ambition, marriage, divorce, parenthood, curiosity, spirituality, and philanthropy.

JUNE 25

Maureen by Rachel Joyce

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she shares with her husband after his iconic walk across England ten years ago. When an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, it is now her turn to make a journey.

JULY 30

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

The story of twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan and the life-saving discovery of the autoimmune disorder that nearly killed her – and that could perhaps be the root of “demonic possessions” throughout history.

AUGUST 27

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

SEPTEMBER 24

The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron Howard & Clint Howard

By turns confessional, nostalgic, heartwarming and harrowing, the award-winning filmmaker and his brother, an audience-favorite actor, share their unusual family story of navigating and surviving life as sibling child actors.

OCTOBER 29

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

Working as a quality control inspector at a toy factory in Rhode Island, friendless alcoholic Smithy Ide considers himself a loser until a tragic event prompts him to set off on an epic cross-country bicycle journey that promises him a final chance to become the man he has always wanted to be.

NOVEMBER 19

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

Featuring David Sedaris’s unique blend of hilarity and heart, this collection of keen-eyed animal-themed tales is an utter delight. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life.

DECEMBER 31

Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb

It’s 1964 and ten-year-old Felix is sure of a few things: the birds and the bees are puzzling, television is magical, and this is one Christmas he’ll never forget.

PAST TITLES

Skip to End of Carousel

Start your search here