Memphis Reads Archive

The Second Saturdays Book Club has met at Highland Branch Library since 1998. Many members—and several moderators—have come and gone, but the book club has consistently had 4 to 5 regulars over the past year. Our book club is open to anyone and we love to see new faces.

We read one book a month, although we usually skip December because of the busy holiday season. Also, some of the summer months have been skipped in the past, but we decided to keep our monthly schedule this year. We usually meet for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on the amount of discussion that a book generates.

Our book club has read a variety of titles over the years, but generally we read books by Southern authors and those set in foreign countries. It was a special treat to have local author and former MPLIC staffer Johanna Edwards come and discuss her first book, The Next Big Thing. Some other recent group favorites have been The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Alexander McCall Smith's Tears of the Giraffe, which is the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Several club members say that our reading selections introduce them to titles and authors that they might not have read otherwise. Others like to "wander around in people’s minds" for a while and experience cultures different from their own. Everyone agrees that we get more out of a reading by discussing how it affects us personally and by sharing the individual experiences and viewpoints that frame how we interpret the book.

We will meet on Saturday, August 12th at 1:30 pm to discuss The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love by Jill Conner Browne. Other upcoming titles are Amy Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning (Sept.), Wickett’s Remedy by Myla Goldberg (Oct.) and No Place Like Home by Mary Higgins Clark (Nov.). We hope to see you there!

Thank you, Jesse and Second Saturdays Book Club Members!

Labels: Book Clubs

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