At our last book club meeting, we discussed Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. This was a favorite for several club members, and all rated it very highly. We've read several of Hannah's books with the group, and everyone has enjoyed them.

Our next meeting is Monday, September 28th at 3pm in the LME Library's large meeting room. We will be discussing the book, Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano. Copies are available for pickup at the front desk. Discussion sheets can also be picked up or are available online.

Book summary: "One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Edward's story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery--one that will lead him to the answers of some of life's most profound questions: When you've lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life? Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again."

We're going to be picking our books for 2027 shortly, and one of our members asked for the list of books we've read. It's posted several times on the blog, but I've redone the list so it is easier to search.

All the books we've read from 2004-2026 (23 years!) are available in this master list:

By year

By author

By title

There are some best books lists for 2026 so far and the borrowreadrepeat.com blog has the best compilation I've seen. It includes picks from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Page, the New York Times, and more--check out the link above!

At our July 27th book club meeting, we discussed Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. We wished we could have watched her TED Talk first before reading. We are not a science-centered book club, and her book launches into more science than we were ready to wade through. We would have preferred a popular-science read, but we appreciated her honest portrayal of her life, even with its problems and issues.

At our June 29th meeting, the group discussed Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See. Our group has read several of See's books during our group's 20+ years, and this book did not disappoint. (Other books by this author that we have read include: Island of Sea Women in 2021, Dreams of Joy  in 2012, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan in 2008.) We had a lot to talk about with this book -- we discussed the practice of foot binding, the role of women in the time period, and female friendships. Overall, the group enjoyed the book and rated it the highest of the year so far.

Our next book club meeting is Monday, July 27, 2026 at 3pm in the LME Library's large meeting room. We will be reading Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. Books are available at the front desk and discussion sheets can also be picked up or are available online. 

Summary: "A personal and scientific work on trees, forests, and the author's profound discoveries of tree communication"-- Simard illuminates the fascinating and vital truths: that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. At the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. Born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, Simard writes of her own journey of understanding who we are and our place in the world, and how the Mother Tree nurtures the forest in the profound ways that families and human societies do. -- adapted from jacket