Beyond Words Book Group
Beyond Words Book Group meets on the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. except for the months of July and August. Meetings are in Potter Hall. Call the Library at 783-8254 for more information. New members always welcome!
Book List
Book List
2021-2022
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- Caste: the origins of our discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
- Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
- Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weide
- Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
- The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan
- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
- What's Mine and Yours by Naima Coster
2020-2021
- Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
- The Huntress by Kate Quinn
- Say Nothing: a true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Keefe
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
- Recursion by Blake Crouch
- This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
- Inheritance: a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love by Dani Shapiro
2019-2020
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
- Barracoon: the story of the last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston
- The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
- Americanah by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
- The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick
- The Library Book by Susan Orlean
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
- Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
- Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
2018-2019
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn West
- Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Bunk: the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, phonies, post-facts, and fake news by Kevin Young
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Great Influenza by John Barry
- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
2017-2018
- September 2017 - The Healing of America by T. R. Reid
- October 2017 - Nutshell by Ian McEwan
- November 2017 - Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
- December 2017 - Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
- January 2018 - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- February 2018 - The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- March 2018 - Hillbillly Elegy by J. D. Vance
- April 2018 - Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
- May 2018 - Books for Living by Will Schwalbe
- June 2018 - In Paradise by Peter Matthessen
2016-2017
- September 2016 - The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- October 2016 - The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
- November 2016 - The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
- December 2016 - The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson
- January 2017 - Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
- February 2017 - The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
- March 2017 - Dead Wake by Erik Larson
- April 2017 - Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- May 2017 - Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
- June 2017 - Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
2015-2016
- April 2016 - Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- December 2015 - All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- February 2016 - Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson
- January 2016 - The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- June 2016 - Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
- March 2016 - Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller
- May 2016 - The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
- November 2015 - Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
- October 2015 - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- September 2015 - How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
2014-2015
- April 2015 - The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
- December 2014 - The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
- February 2015 - The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
- January 2015 - The Art Forger by Barbara Shapiro
- June 2015 - Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast
- March 2015 - My Notorious Life by Kate Manning
- May 2015 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
- November 2014 - Still Alice by Lisa Genova
- October 2014 - Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
- September 2014 - Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
2013-2014
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- Dead Before Dying by Deon Meyer
- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
- Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris
- God's Hotel by Victoria Sweet
- Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
- Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
- The Round House by Louise Erdrich
- You Just Don't Understand by Deborah Tannen
- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2012-2013
- As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
- Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
- The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
- Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
- Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey
- River of Doubt by Candice Millard
- What Money Can't Buy by Michael Sandel
- The Women by T.C. Boyle
- State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
2011-2012
- April 11 - Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
- December 14 - People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
- February 8 - Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
- January 11, 2012 - Time and Again by Jack Finney
- June 13 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- March 14 - Room by Emma Donoghue
- May 9 - Metzger's Dog by Thomas Perry
- November 9 - One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
- October 12 - The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
- September 14, 2011 -Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
2009-2010
- Austerlitz by WG. Sebald
- Five Skies by Ron Carlson
- In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
- Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew J. Bacevich
- Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison
- Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino
- Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- The Omnivore's Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
2007-2008
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
- Mayflower: a Study of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick
- Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
- This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig
- Waiting for Snow in Havana by Carlos Eire
- The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
2006-2007
- Aloft by Chang Rae Lee
- Collapse by Jared Diamond
- Empire Falls by Richard Russo
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Foer
- Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
- My Life in France by Julia Child and Paul Prudhomme
- No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
- Pretty Birds by Scott Simon
- West With the Night by Beryl Markham
- Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
2005-2006
- 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies
- Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Mailman by J.Robert Lennon
- The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall
- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
- V by Thomas Pynchon
2004-2005
- In the Castle of the Flynns by Michael Raleigh
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro
- Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
- The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
- Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
- The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
2003-2004
- Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
- Lost Nation by Jeffrey Lent
- Love's Executioner: and Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin Yalom
- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
- Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
- Under Cover of Daylight by James Hall
2002-2003
- About the Author by John Colapinto
- All the Names by Jose Saramago
- Blanche Cleans Up by Barbara Neely
- Plagues and People by William McNeill
- The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
- Steel Beach by John Varley
- Till We Have Faces: a Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis
- White Noise by Don DeLillo
2001-2002
- Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
- Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
- The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
- The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
- The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye
- Newjack: Guarding Sing-Sing by Ted Conover
- No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
- School for the Blind by Dennis McFarland
2000-2001
- Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of WWII by John W Dower
- Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser
- Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
- Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
- The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
1999-2000
- The Color of Water by James McBride
- Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones
- No Mercy: a Journey into the Heart of the Congo by Redmond O'Hanlon
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
- Possession by A.S. Byatt
- Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
- We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by Harold G. Moore
- The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
- The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve
- A Widow for One Year by John Irving
1998-1999
- Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
- Corelli's Mandolin by Louis DeBernieres
- Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
- Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
- Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
- The Other Side of the River by Alex Kotlowitz
- Poison by Kathryn Harrison
- Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen
- Snow in August by Pete Hamill
- Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi
1997-1998
- Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
- Bailey's Café by Gloria Naylor
- Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn by Paul Watkins
- A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
- Mercy by David Lindsey
- Northern Borders by Howard Mosher
- A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- The River God by Wilbur Smith
1996-1997
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
- Familiar Heat by Mary Hood
- Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
- Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
- Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
- The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
- Swimming in the Congo by Margaret Meyers
- Wild Swans by Jung Chang