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


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