Book Club

Inception and Overview

In July 2017, the OSU Alumni Club of Athens County launched a book club for the membership.  The goal of this book club is to be a venue that will bring readers together, encouraging reading for enrichment and pleasure.

We began with reading titles assigned for OSU’s Common Experience but branched out to include other titles.  Our reading list includes both non-fiction and fiction, but non-fiction is our primary choice.  We read one book a month and then meet to discuss.

Purpose

The purpose of our book club is to engage with the club members who are interested in reading, engaging in discussion, and enjoying camaraderie with like-minded members.

Selection Criteria

We strive to read as diverse list each year as possible.  The main criteria for inclusion are literary quality, readability and appropriate length, and interest to the book club members.

Suggested Readings

Schedule

The 2024 Book Club Schedule The book club meets on the last Thursday of each month, except as noted below, at Athens Uncorked on Station Street at 5:30 p.m. Please contact Debi Orr-Roderick at dorr64@gmail.com with any questions.
January 25
February 29
March 28
April 25
May 30
June 27
July 25
August 29
September 26
October 31
November 21 (pushed up one week for Thanksgiving)
December – No Meeting; holiday break

Books read by the Alumni Club of Athens County

  • Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson (July 2017)
  • The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore (date unknown)
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (date unknown)
  • The Language of Baklava: A Memoir, by Diana Abu-Jaber (February 2018)
  • Hamilton, The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda (March 2018)
  • The Last Castle, by Denise Kiernan (April 2018)
  • Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (May 2018)
  • Irena’s Children, by Tilar J. Mazzeo (June 2018)
  • The Things they Carried, by Tim O’Brien (July 2018)
  • The War against Boys, by Christina Hoff-Summers (September 2018)
  • The Imperial Cruise, by James Bradley (October 2018)
  • Steinbeck: A life in letters, by John Steinbeck and Elaine Steinbeck (ed) (November 2018)
  • Out of this Furnace, by Thomas Bell (January 2019)
  • Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang (March 2019)
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the birth of the FBI, by David Grann (April 2019)
  • Modoc: The true story of the greatest elephant that ever lived, by Ralph Helfer (May, 2019)
  • Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think, by Hans Rosling (June 2019)
  • The Pioneers: The heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west, by David McCullough (August 2019)
  • The beekeeper’s lament: how one man and half a billion honeybees help feed America, by Hannah Nordhaus (September 2019)
  • Dreamland: The true tale of America’s opiate epidemic, by Sam Quinones (October 2019)
  • Midnight in Chernobyl: the untold story of the world’s greatest nuclear disaster, by Adam Higginbotham (November 2019)
  • Confederates in the attic, by Tony Horwitz (January 2020)
  • They called us enemy, by George Takei (March 2020)
  • Thirteen reasons why, by Jay Asher (March 2020)
  • The Filter Bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think, by Eli Pariser (September 2020)
  • The tip of the iceberg, by Mark Adams (November 2020)
  • Tribe: On homecoming and belonging, by Sebastian Junger (January 2021)
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (February 2021)
  • Songs of America by Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw (March 2021)
  • The Library Book by Susan Orlean (April 2021)
  • Asylum on The Hill by Katherine Ziff (May 2021)
  • Short Tragic Life of Robert Pearce by Jeff Hobbs (September 2021)
  • Out of the Pocket by Kirk Herbstreit (October 2021)
  • The Code Breaker by Jennifer Doudna (November 2021)
  • True Raiders by Brad Ricca (January 2022)
  • Notorious RBG by Irin Carmen and Shana Knizhnick (March 2022)
  • Down from The Mountain by Bryce Andrews (May 2022)
  • In God We Trust by Jean Shepherd (June 2022)
  • Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck (July 2022)
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (August 2022)
  • Exile by Richard North Patterson (September 2022)
  • The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara (October 2022)
  • Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (January 2023)
  • Uncovering Norse Mythology/Uncovering Viking History both by Lucas Russo (February 2023)
  • The Burning Blue by Kevin Cook (March 2023)
  • That Dark and Bloody River by Allan W. Eckert (April 2023)
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (May 2023)
  • Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose (June 2023)
  • Trust by Herman Diaz (July 2023)
  • Upstairs at The Whitehouse by JB West (August 2023)
  • The Grove by John Rector (September 2023)
  • The Moth Presents: Occasional Magic edited by Catherine Burns (October 2023)
  • Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (November 2023)