CLC Book Group

Looking for a good read?

Our book group meets on the 3rd Monday of the month at 3:00pm in The Gathering Place. All are welcome to join, even if you have not read the book. We alternate between fiction and nonfiction selections.

Upcoming Selections

February 18: One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, by Michael Frank. 2022. 240 pages.

The author writes of his conversations over six years with Stella Levi, who brings to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale.

May 20: Go As a River, by Shelley Read. 2023. 321 pages.

Set amid Colorado’s wild beauty, the heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a resilient young woman whose life is changed forever by one chance encounter.

Aug. 19: Casa da Anabelle: Morphing into Grace, by Anabelle Petersen. 2025. 223 pages.

The author offers a raw and luminous memoir of transformation. From the depths of unimaginable loss — the death of her brother, the passing of both parents, infertility, and the heartache of starting over — Anabelle found something sacred waiting on the other side: purpose.

Nov. 18: The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife: A Novel, by Anna Johnston. 2024. 336 pages.

At age eighty-two, there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from, and he is broke and on the brink of eviction. But his luck changes when he is mistaken for Bernard Greer, a missing resident at the local nursing home, and takes his place. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head — as long as his look-alike Bernard never turns up.

March 18: The Plot, a Novel, by Jean Hanff Korelitz. 2022. 336 pages.

When Jake discovers that his former, recently-deceased student has died without having completed his sure-thing novel-in-progress, he does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that―a story that absolutely needs to be told.

June 20: The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. 2021. 272 pages.

The authors focus on “Four Reasons for Hope”: The Amazing Human Intellect, The Resilience of Nature, The Power of Young People, and The Indomitable Human Spirit.

Sept. 16: The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho. 2014. 208 pages.

This novel, translated into 80 languages, has inspired a devoted following around the world. An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a mysterious treasure buried near the Pyramids. Those he meets along the way help him discover the treasure found within.

April 15: Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. 2017. 304 pages.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, but when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.

July 15: The Sentence: A Novel, by Louise Erdrich. 2022. 400 pages.

Erdrich’s wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors, wherein she asks what we owe the living and what we owe the dead.

Oct. 21: Where the Birds Never Sing: The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau, by Jack Sacco. 2003. 336 pages.

The author speaks in the first person, through the eyes of his father. The result is one of the most powerful and moving accounts of the human drama in World War II in recent memory.

Past Selections