The Book Works Reading Groups 2008: All Welcome

Book club participants receive  a 10% discount on the book selection and a 10% discount on all books purchased at the time of the meeting. If your book group does not meet at The Book Works, mention that you are in an off-site book group to receive a 10% discount on your book selection. 

Children's Book Groups: click here

Monday Non-Fiction Book Group, 7:00 pm

*Monday, May 19, 7:00 pm: The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria

Note: Special guest Joe Murphy, a representative from W.W. Norton Publishing House, will facilitate this discussion. THIS BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE AT THE STORE!

Read the 4/21/08 New Yorker article that discusses this book

The Post-American World: (starred review, Publishers Weekly): When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but “the rise of everyone else,” readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweek editor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India’s greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum.

2nd Tuesday Group, 7 pm

May 13, The Gathering

June 10, What is the What

July 8, Freedom Song

3rd Friday Square Table International Group, 11 am

May, The Sea and Mothers and Sons

June, Infidel and Murder in Amsterdam

July, Boys from Dolores

August, Travels with Herodotus

Sept, Nine Nights

Oct?

Nov, Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown

3rd Saturday Meet-Up Group, 10 am

May, Cry, The Beloved Country

June, Of Human Bondage

July, Pox Americana

August, The Aenid

Sept, Picture of Dorian Gray

October, Of Mice and Men

November, Death of Ivan Ilyich

4th Tuesday Group, 7 pm

June, Reluctant Fundamentalist

July, Echo Maker

August, Post-Birthday World

September, Christine Falls

October, The Colony

November, A Woman in Jerusalem

All of our events are free to the public