Calling all Readers!

If you get a kick out of reading and discussing worthwhile and challenging books, please consider joining the Book Discussion Group of the FSU Faculty and Friends Club.
The book lists from 2017-2019 are listed separately.
We meet monthly at the home of a member, usually the third Monday night of the month, from 7:00 pm until about 9:00 pm. We share refreshments the first half-hour followed by stimulating discussion of the book for that month. One member usually volunteers to prepare and lead the discussion. “Guest artists” such as Bruce Bickley who covered Moby Dick in an hour (instead of a semester!) and lead us in a discussion of Lolita. Through the years, we’ve been fortunate to have many of other local authors lead our discussions!
Our group uses a nomination and voting process yearly to select a variety of genres: fiction, non-fiction, classics, poetry, short stories, autobiography, and more. We often read works by authors who have won prestigious awards, such as the Mann Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. For example:

• Author John Shors, will engage us in live dialogue via teleconference in fall 2014 about his critically acclaimed historical novel, Beneath a Marble Sky.
• Earlier in 2014 we re-read and discussed Alice Munro’s For the Love of a Woman (2013 Nobel Prize for Literature).
• Also in 2014, we chose to read and discuss the non-fiction There is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue Her Country’s Children, by Melissa Fay Greene, whose book has won numerous awards, including American Library Association Notable Book of the Year.
• Ayaan Hirsi won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2008 for her book Infidel: My Life, which we read in 2012.
• In 2009, we discussed Junot Díaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Pulitzer Prize), since the author was featured in Seven Days of Opening Nights at FSU that month.

Local authors whose works we’ve read include:

• the late Audrey Wilson (England and Another Shore), also a Book Group member
• Donna Meredith (The Color of Lies, The Glass Madonna), also a Book Group member
• Mark Mustian (The Gendarme)
• Joe Hutto (Illumination in the Flatwoods: A Season with the Wild Turkey)
• Agnes Furey and Leonard Scoven (Wildflowers in the Median: A Restorative Journey into Healing, Justice, & Joy)
• David Kirby (The House on Boulevard Street)
• Mary Sterner Lawson (June Bug’s Grocery and the Cornfield Jook)
• Barbara Hamby (Babel)
• Julianna Baggott (Girl Talk)
• Bruce Grindal (Bridges to Humanity)
• Janet Burroway (Opening Nights)
• inspired us as he led the discussion of his poetry collection,

 
You’ll be wowed when you see all we have read in the past over 37 years! Be sure also to have a look at our current book list, then…know that you’re welcome to join us! If you have any questions, please contact our Coordinators, Ursel Homann and Donna Meredith.