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.

The 2021 Meeting Schedule

  • All book club meetings are scheduled for the last Thursday of the month, unless otherwise noted.
  • The meeting commences at 5:30 pm, at Athens Uncorked.  As of March 2020, the Pandemic has paused in-person meetings.  Until it is safe to meet in-person, the club meets via Zoom.  Anyone who is interested in joining the conversation, please contact Debi Orr-Roderick at orrd@ohio.edu. For technical and event information, please contact Keith Morrow, keith@kmorrow.us.
  • January 28
  • February 25
  • March 25
  • April 29
  • May 27
  • June 24
  • July 29
  • August 26
  • September 30
  • October 28
  • November 18 (pushed up 1 week due to Thanksgiving)
  • December (no meeting; holiday break)

Suggested Readings

Suggested ReadingsDownload

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)