The following books have been selected for discussion in 2025:
January (1-23-25): The Dictionary People, Sarah Ogilvie (ZOOM Book Club meeting)
The Oxford English Dictionary aimed to document not how words should be used but how they were actually used. Thousands of people copied snippets from their reading onto slips of paper and mailed them to Oxford, where they were sorted and analyzed into >400,000 entries in the first (1928) edition. Nonfiction, 3683 pages.
February (2-27-25):
Paris Review editor Ben Ryder Howe’s wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents’ self-sacrifice by buying them a store. My Korean Deli follows the store’s tumultuous life span, and paints the portrait of an extremely unlikely partnership between characters with shoots across society. Memoir, 321 pages.
March (3-27-25): When Women Were Dragons, Kelly Barnhill (Minneapolis Institute of Art Book Tour)
A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are. Fantasy, 367 pages.
April (4-24-25): Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer recounts his unique fellowship in an underground seminary during the Nazi years in Germany. Giving practical advice on how life together in Christ can be sustained in families and groups, Life Together is bread for all who are hungry for the real life of Christian fellowship. Nonfiction, 128 pages.
May (5-22-25): The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
In 1972 workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, find a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by residents of the Chicken Hill neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Fiction, 385 pages.
June (6-26-25):
Combining solid academic research with bawdy humor, Spalding portrays each so-called “genius” in a series of embarrassing vignettes while also providing further context about the figures. Nonfiction, 342 pages.
July (7-24-25): El Deafo, Cece Bell
Starting a new school is scary, even more so with a giant hearing aid (the Phonic Ear) strapped to your chest. Cece discovers that she can hear her teacher not just in the classroom, but anywhere her teacher is in the school! Cece is on her way to becoming El Deafo, listener for all. She finds that being a superhero is just another way of feeling different … and lonely. Children’s middle-grades graphic memoir, 248 pages.
August (8-28-25): Hard Work and a Good Deal, Barbara Sommer
September (9-25-25): The Kindness of Enemies, Leila Aboulela
In 2010 Natasha is researching the life of Imam Shamil, the 19th century Muslim leader who led the anti-Russian resistance in the Caucasian War, and discovers that her star student, Osama (Oz), is not only descended from the warrior but also possesses Shamil’s legendary sword. An important examination of what it is to be a Muslim in a post-9/11 world. Nonfiction, 338 pages.
October (10-23-25): Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, Anne Lamont
Even when life is at its bleakest—when we are, as Anne Lamott puts it, “doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated”—the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but “to do what Wendell Berry wrote: ‘Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'” Nonfiction, 208 pages.
November: This month will be skipped.
December (12-4-25): Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (choose books for 2026)
In Christmas season 1985, Bill Furlong is a coal merchant and family man in a small Irish town. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Fiction, 128 pages.
The NHLC Book Club meets monthly on the fourth Thursday at 7:00 pm in the church Courtyard, unless otherwise noted above. In warmer months, the group may meet outside in members’ backyards. Everyone is invited to read the books and join the discussion!
Leave a Reply