The Bookwoman Book Club
Calling all booklovers!
The Bookwoman Book Club (BBC) is a virtual book club that meets once a month to discuss our latest book selection from the WNBA’s Great Group Reads list.
WNBA members are spread across the country, so the book club allows us to meet monthly to discuss books together regardless of chapter or location.
This group gives our members a special place where they can connect with fellow members over our common love of books. And members can participate in exclusive discussions and author interviews. We also have occasional giveaways!
With members from all chapters, from locations across the US, our book club allows new relationships to grow and flourish. It allows our members to be exposed to new books and authors and to grow as readers.
Whether you attend every month or only occasionally or even if you only ever read the books on your own, we invite you to join the Bookwoman Book Club.
The Details
The BBC is a benefit for WNBA members, so it is a members-only book club.
We meet on the last Tuesday of each month at 7 pm EDT/6 pm CDT/4 pm PDT.
Our discussions take place over Zoom.
All communications are by email. We send out a newsletter at the beginning of the month and a discussion reminder the day of the discussion. Occasionally, we will send out additional emails with content about the book, giveaway notices, and other book club-related items.
When we are able, we interview the author in the weeks following the book club discussion on Zoom.
We often run giveaways of upcoming book club selections, so make sure to become a BBC member!
To Join
Email: communications [at] wnba-books.org with the subject line “Joining the Bookwoman Book Club.”
You must be a member in good standing to participate.
Our 2023/2024 membership year begins on June 1, 2023, but if you join early in April or May, you get them free! So, please join or renew now in order to participate in the BBC.
Upcoming Bookwoman Book Club Discussions
March 28 — Bookwoman Book Club Discussion: Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour
Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour
by Yelena Lembersky and Galina Lembersky
7 pm EDT/6 pm CDT/4 pm PDT
On Zoom
Open to all WNBA members
Like a Drop of Ink in a Downpour traces Yelena Lembersky’s childhood in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) in the ’70s and ‘80s. Her life is upended when her family decides to emigrate to America, but instead her mother is charged with a crime and unjustly incarcerated.
Told in the dual points of view, this memoir is a clear-eyed look at the reality of life in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, giving us an insider’s perspective on the roots of contemporary Russia. It is also a coming-of-age story, heartfelt and funny, a testament to the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters, and the healing power of art.
April 25 — Bookwoman Book Club Discussion: The Last Goldfish
The Last Goldfish
by Anita Lahey
7 pm EDT/6 pm CDT/4 pm PDT
On Zoom
Open to all WNBA members
Twenty-five years ago and counting, Louisa, my true, essential, always-there-for-everything friend, died. We were 22.
When Anita Lahey opens her binder in grade nine French and gasps over an unsigned form, the girl with the burst of red hair in front of her whispers, Forge it! Thus begins an intense, joyful friendship, one of those powerful bonds forged in youth that shapes a person’s identity and changes the course of a life.
Anita and Louisa navigate the wilds of 1980s suburban adolescence against the backdrop of dramatic world events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. They make carpe diem their manifesto and hatch ambitious plans. But when Louisa’s life takes a shocking turn, into hospital wards, medical tests, and treatments, a new possibility confronts them, one that alters, with devastating finality, the prospect of the future for them both.
Equal parts humorous and heartbreaking, The Last Goldfish is a poignant memoir of youth, friendship, and the impermanence of life.
May 30 — Bookwoman Book Club Discussion: A Map for the Missing
A Map for the Missing
by Belinda Huijuan Tang
7 pm EDT/6 pm CDT/4 pm PDT
On Zoom
Open to all WNBA members
Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s 2022 First Novel Prize; August 2022 Indie Next List
An epic, mesmerizing debut novel set against a rapidly changing post–Cultural Revolution China, A Map for the Missing reckons with the costs of pursuing one’s dreams and the lives we leave behind.
Tang Yitian has been living in America for almost a decade when he receives an urgent phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from the family’s rural village in China. Though they have been estranged for years, Yitian promises to come home.
When Yitian attempts to piece together what may have happened, he struggles to navigate China’s impenetrable bureaucracy as an outsider, and his mother’s evasiveness only deepens the mystery. So he seeks out a childhood friend who may be in a position to help: Tian Hanwen, the only other person who shared Yitian’s desire to pursue a life of knowledge. As a teenager, Hanwen was “sent down” from Shanghai to Yitian’s village as part of the country’s rustication campaign. Young and in love, they dreamed of attending university in the city together. But when their plans resulted in a terrible tragedy, their paths diverged, and while Yitian ended up a professor in America, Hanwen was left behind, resigned to life as a midlevel bureaucrat’s wealthy housewife.
Reuniting for the first time as adults, Yitian and Hanwen embark on the search for Yitian’s father, all the while grappling with the past — who Yitian’s father really was, and what might have been. Spanning the late 1970s to 1990s and moving effortlessly between rural provinces and big cities, A Map for the Missing is a deeply felt examination of family and forgiveness, and the meaning of home.
June 27 — Bookwoman Book Club Discussion: The Barrens
The Barrens
by Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson
7 pm EDT/6 pm CDT/4 pm PDT
On Zoom
Open to all WNBA members
This riveting debut is at once a white-water adventure, coming-of-age novel, and tale of tragic love — and an extraordinary father-daughter collaboration.
Two young women attending college decide to have a summer adventure canoeing the rapids-strewn Thelon River that runs 450 miles through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers she trained with at camp, and she wants to share that experience with her friend and lover, Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly, the risk-taker, falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff. She is left injured and comatose, and soon dies. Their locator beacon for summoning rescue was smashed in Holly’s fall. It remains to Lee, the inexperienced paddler, to continue the grueling and dangerous trip alone, to save herself and return her lover’s body to civilization and Holly’s family.
In their relationship, Holly and Lee had always told each other stories; Lee had called Holly a “storyist.” Storytelling helps Lee endure the rigors of her journey and engage her grief as she explores her relationship with Holly while chronicling her own coming-of-age off the grid in Nebraska with her estranged eco-anarchist father, who is now serving time in prison.
Past BBC Choices
- April 2020: The Book Woman from Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (2019 GGR)
- May 2020: The Honey Bus by Meredith May (2019 GGR)
- June 2020: The Lido, aka Mornings with Rosemary by Libby Page (2018 GGR)
- July 2020: The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner (2019 GGR)
- August 2020: Haben by Haben Girma (2019 GGR)
- September 2020: The Lotus Eaters by Tajana Soli (2010 GGR)
- October 2020: A House Among the Trees by Julia Glass (2018 GGR)
- November/December 2020: The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber (2017 GGR)
- January 2021: The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline (2020 GGR)
- February 2021: Tea Beyond the Sea by Donna Hemans (2020 GGR)
- March 2021: In Our Midst by Nancy Jensen (2020 GGR)
- April 2021: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (2020 GGR)
- May 2021: All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung (2019 GGR)
- June 2021: In Five Years by Rebecca Serle (2020 GGR)
- July 2021: My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira (2011 GGR)
- August 2021: Dietland by Sarai Walker (2015 GGR)
- September 2021: A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti (2016 GGR)
- October 2021: Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett (2016 GGR)
- November/December 2021: The Seed Keeper by by Diane Wilson (2021 GGR)
- January 2022: The Son of the House by by Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia (2021 GGR)
- February 2022: All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks with Kevin Carr O’Leary (2021 GGR)
- March 2022: The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin (2021 GGR)
- April 2022: The Salt Houses by Hala Alyan (2017 GGR)
- May 2022: The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories by Caroline Kim (2021 GGR)
- June 2022: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2012 GGR)
- July 2022: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (2013 GGR)
- August 2022: Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (2021 GGR)
- September 2022: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (2014 GGR)
- October 2022: Blame by Michelle Huneven (2010 GGR)
- November 2022: A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter by Carolyn Hays (2022 GGR)
- January 2023: I Will Die in a Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart (2022 GGR)
- February 2023: Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (2022 GGR)
