Wednesday Book Group

The Wednesday Book Group is WFPL’s monthly book discussion group for adults. Discussions are informal and generally based on personal reactions, not academic analysis. While the Library is closed, we’re meeting via Zoom, and invite all to join us!

Wednesday Book Group meets on the first Wednesday of the month, at 7 PM. Visit the book groups calendar to find our next meeting and register via Zoom!

2019-2020 Wednesday Book Group Titles

  • September 4 - Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change by Andrew Solomon (see specific selections below)
  • October 2 - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
  • November 6 - Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
  • December 4 - The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
  • January 8 - The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony
  • February 5 - LaRose by Louise Erdrich
  • March 4 – Watertown Reads selection
  • No meeting
  • May 6 – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  • June 3 – The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve / Book Selection Meeting
  • July 1 - The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
  • August 5 - The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee

Wednesday Book Group Previous Titles

2018-2019

  • Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (September)
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (October)
  • A Piece of the World by C.B. Kline (November)
  • The Human Comedy by William Saroyan (December)
  • Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney
  • Lincoln in the Baardo by George Saunders (February)
  • The Library Book by Susan Orlean (March – One Book, One Watertown)
  • The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (April)
  • Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (May)
  • The Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney (July)
  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (August)

2017-2018

  • The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (September)
  • Dead Wake: The Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson (October)
  • Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (November)
  • The Children Act by Ian McEwan (December)
  • The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (January)
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (February)
  • Refuge by Dina Nayeri (March – One Book, One Watertown)
  • Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult (April)
  • The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith (May)
  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (July)
  • The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker (August)

2016-2017

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (September)
  • Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (October)
  • Defending Jacob by William Landay (November)
  • Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks (December)
  • Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline (January)
  • Lila by Marilynne Robinson (February)
  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (March – One Book, One Watertown)
  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (April)
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (May)
  • 1984 by George Orwell (July)
  • Citizens of London by Lynne Olson (August)

2015-2016

  • Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (September)
  • Ireland by Frank Delaney (October)
  • The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert (November)
  • All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (December)
  • Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (January)
  • Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande (February)
  • The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Build America’s First Subwayby Doug Most (March – One Book, One Watertown)
  • The Reivers by William Faulkner (April)
  • A Spy Among Friends by Ben MacIntyre (May)

2014-2015

  • My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor (September)
  • Salvage the Bones by Jessmyn Ward (October)
  • Infidel by Ayaan Hersi Ali (November)
  • The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (December)
  • Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts (January)
  • The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (February)
  • The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (March – One Book, One Watertown)
  • A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Siskind (April)
  • The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure (May)

2013-2014

  • Wool by Hugh Howey (September – One Book, One Watertown)
  • Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (October)
  • The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins (November)
  • The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (December)
  • Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles (January)
  • The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (February)
  • Maine by Courtney Sullivan (March)
  • In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson (April)
  • Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather (May)

2012-2013

  • Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (September)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (October – One Book, One Watertown)
  • Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Steven Puleo (November)
  • State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (December)
  • The Good Life by Jay McInerney (January)
  • By Nightfall: A Novel by Michael Cunningham (February)
  • Room by Emma Donoghue (March)
  • The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High-Stakes Game Played Inside Lehman Brothers by Vicky Ward Wiley (April)
  • Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry (May)

2011-2012

  • Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam, Jr. (September – One Book, One Watertown)
  • The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass (October)
  • Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach (November)
  • The Bone People: A Novel by Keri Hulme (December)
  • The Company of Heaven: Stories from Haiti by Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell (January)
  • The Imperfectionists: A Novel by Tom Rachman (February)
  • Little Bee by Chris Cleave (March)
  • Brooklyn by Colm Toibin (April)
  • The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (May)

2010-2011

  • The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (September)
  • March by Geraldine Brooks (October, One Book, One Watertown)
  • Abigail Adams by Woody Holton (November)
  • Old Filth by Jane Gardam (December)
  • Fools of Fortune by William Trevor (January)
  • Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (February)
  • The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Brett Witter (March)
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (May)

2009-2010

  • Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (September)
  • Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman (October – One Book, One Watertown)
  • The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor (November)
  • West with the Night by Beryl Markham (December)
  • Thames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (January)
  • The American Wife: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld (February)
  • A Summer Bird Cage by Margaret Drabble (March)
  • The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper (April
  • The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (May)

2008-2009

  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (September 2008)
  • The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (January 2009)

2007-2008

  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (September)
  • Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith (October)
  • Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick (November)
  • Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (December)
  • Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvin Bragg (January)
  • The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad (February)
  • Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace – One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson (March)
  • Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (April)
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (May)
  • Zappo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems by Gail Mazur (July)

2006-2007

  • Shadow of the Wind by Luis Ruiz Zafon (September 20, 2006)
  • Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (October 4, 2006)
  • March by Geraldine Brooks (October 18, 2006)
  • On Beauty by Zadie Smith (November 1, 2006)
  • Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (November 15, 2006)
  • Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism by Megan Marshall (November 29, 2006)
  • Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler (December 13, 2006)
  • My Life in France by Julia Child (January 10, 2007)
  • 1776 by David McCullough (January 2007)
  • Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte (February 2007)
  • The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman (March 2007)
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffeneger (April 2007)
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (May 2007)

2005-2006

  • The Known World by Edward P. Jones (September 2005)
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (October 2005)
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (October 2005)
  • Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester (November 2005)
  • Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama (November 2005)
  • The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (December 2005)
  • The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (December 2005)
  • Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis (January 2006)
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (January 2006)
  • The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck (February 2006)
  • The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (February 2006)
  • Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian (March 2006)
  • Brick Lane by Monica Ali (March 2006)
  • The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (April 2006)
  • The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (April 2006)
  • Embers by Sandor Marai and Carol Brown Janeway (May 2006)
  • Saturday by Ian McEwen (May 2006)

2004-2005

  • Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (September 15, 2004)
  • The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (October 6, 2004)
  • Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (October 20, 2004)
  • Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (November 3, 2004)
  • Three Junes by Julia Glass (November 17, 2004)
  • The Founding Fish by John McPhee (December 1, 2004)
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith (December 15, 2006)
  • The Piano Tuner by David Mason (January 5, 2005)
  • The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard Feynman by Richard Feynman and Jeffrey Robbins (January 17, 2005)
  • Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross (February 2, 2005)
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel (February 14, 2005)
  • Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer (March 2, 2005)
  • Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (March 14, 2005)
  • Annunciation of Francesca Dunn by Janis Hallowell (April 6, 2005)
  • What Lips My Lips Have Kissed by Daniel Mark Epstein (April 20, 2005)
  • The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (May 4, 2005)
  • Blue Calhoun by Reynolds Price (May 18, 2005)
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi (June 1, 2005)

2003-2004

  • Empire Falls by Richard Russo (October 1, 2003)
  • The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (October 15, 2003)
  • Ahab’s Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund (November 5, 2003)
  • Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (November 19, 2003)
  • Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (December 3, 2003)
  • Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (January 7, 2004)
  • Atonement by Ian McEwan (January 21, 2004)
  • The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community (February 4, 2004)
  • In the Bleak Mid-Winter by Julia Spencer-Fleming
  • Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller (February 18, 2004)
  • Portrait in Sepia by Isabelle Allende (March 3, 2004)
  • Dancing After Hours: Stories by Andre Dubus (March 17, 2004)
  • House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (April 7, 2004)
  • Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai (April 21, 2004)
  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (May 5, 2004)
  • No Other Life by Brian Moore

2002-2003

  • White Noise by Don DeLillo
  • Are You Somebody? by Nuala O’Faolain
  • Inventing the Abbots by Sue Miller
  • A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
  • In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
  • A Simple Habana Melody by Oscar Hijuelos
  • Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould
  • The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
  • The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
  • Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (see also 1991)
  • The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
  • Back Then by Anne Bernays and Justin Kaplan
  • The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
  • Boomeritis: A Novel that Will Set You Free by Ken Wilber
  • Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes by Atul Gawande
  • Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt

2001-2002

  • Collected Stories; One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty (September 14, 2001)
  • Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (October 10, 2001)
  • House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus (October 24, 2001)
  • Personal History by Katharine Graham (November 14, 2001—or May 1, 2002)
  • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (November 28, 2001)
  • Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier;
  • Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland (December 12, 2001—or June 5 & 19, 2002?)
  • Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (January 9, 2002)
  • A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (January 23, 2002)
  • Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman (February 6, 2002)
  • Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood (February 20, 2002)
  • Weight of Water by Anita Shreve (March 6, 2002)
  • Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis (April 3, 2002)
  • The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen (April 17, 2002)
  • Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir (May 15, 2002)

2000-2001

  • The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powell (January 10, 2001)
  • From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (January 24, 2001)
  • The Music Lesson by Katharine Weber (February 14, 2001)
  • The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (February 28 2001)
  • Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout (March 14, 2001)
  • Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks (March 28 2001)
  • Utz by Bruce Chatwin (April 11. 2001)
  • Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai (April 25, 2001)
  • While I Was Gone by Sue Miller (May 9, 2001)
  • Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike (May 23, 2001)
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (June 13, 2001)

1999-2000

  • Roxanna Slade by Reynolds Price (September 15, 1999)
  • Selections from Written by Herself, Jill Kerr Conway, ed. (September 29, 1999)
  • Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind (October 13, 1999)
  • Dusk by F. Sionil Jose (October 27, 1999)
  • All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg (November 10, 1999)
  • Orly Farms by Anthony Trollope (December 8, 1999)
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (December 22, 1999)
  • Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore (January 12, 2000)
  • A Supposedly Fun Thing I’d Never Do Again: Essays and Other Arguments by David Foster Wallace (January 26, 2000)
  • The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (February 9 2000)
  • Longitude by Dava Sobel (February 23, 2000)
  • Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (March 8, 2000)
  • Charming Billy by Alice McDermott (March 22, 2000)
  • The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich (April 12, 2000)
  • The Whereabouts of Eneas McMulty by Sebastian Barry (April 26, 2000)
  • The Finishing School by Gail Godwin (May 10, 2000)
  • Death in Summer by William Trevor (May 24, 2000)

1998-1999

  • Bucking the Sun by Ivan Doig (September 30, 1998)
  • A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (December 16, 1998)
  • Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (December 30, 1998)
  • A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton (January 13, 1999)
  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (January 27, 1999)
  • Midwives by Chris Bohjalian (February 10, 1999)
  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (February 24, 1999)
  • The Mirror by Lynn Freed (March 10, 1999)
  • The Italian Lesson by Janice Elliott (March 24 1999)
  • Sleeping at the Starlite Motel by Bailey White (April 7, 1999)
  • The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (April 21, 1999)
  • Life Estates by Shelby Hearon (May 5, 1999)

1997-1998

  • I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn (August 27, 1997)
  • Audrey Hepburn’s Neck by Alan Brown (September 10. 1997)
  • Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams (September 24. 1997)
  • Salt Dancers by Ursula Hegi (October 8. 1997)
  • Synonym for Love by Alison Moore (October 22, 1997)
  • Moo by Jane Smiley (November 19. 1997)
  • Red Azalea by Anchee Min (December 2, 1997)
  • The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken (December 17, 1997)

1996-1997

  • Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (January 14, 1997)
  • Summer by Edith Wharton (January 28, 1997)
  • Jackie by Josie by Caroline Preston (February 11, 1997)
  • She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb ((February 25, 1997)
  • Independence Day by Richard Ford (March 11, 1197)
  • Rapture of Canaan by Sherri Reynolds (March 25, 1997)
  • The Little House by Philippa Gregory (April 8, 1997)
  • Larry’s Party by Carol Shields (April 22, 1997)
  • Mrs. Hornstien by Fredrica Wagman (May 13, 1997)
  • Selections from Best Short Stories of 1997, Annie Proulx, ed. (May 27, 1997)
  • The Good Husband by Gail Godwin (June 10, 1997)

1995-1996

  • Before and After by Rosellen Brown (November 11, 1995)
  • The Fragile Species by Lewis Thomas (November 1995)
  • Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen (December 1995)
  • Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor (January 1996)
  • One True Thing by Alice Quindlen (February 1996)
  • Life and Death in Shanghai by Cheng Nien (March 1996)
  • The Sacrifice of Tamar by Naomi Ragen (April 16, 1996)
  • In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien (May 1996)
  • Paula: A Memoir by Isabel Allende (June 1996)

1994-1995                                                                                                     

  • Silent Passengers by Larry Woiwode
  • The Beet Queen by Louis Erdrich
  • Borrowed Time by Paul Monette
  • Anatomy of an Illness by Paul Monette
  • The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
  • Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman
  • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (December 12 1994)
  • The Music Room by Dennis McFarland (January 9, 1995)
  • At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott (January 23, 1995)
  • In a Country of Mothers by A.M. Homes (February 23, 1995)
  • Possession by A.S. Byatt (March 13, 1995)
  • Blue River by Ethan Canin (March 27, 1995)
  • Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston (April 10, 1995)
  • The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (April 24, 1995)
  • The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (May 8. 1995)
  • Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (May 22, 1995)

1993-1994

  • Broken Vessels by Andre Dubus
  • A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris
  • Postcards by Annie Proulx
  • How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez
  • Goodness by Tim Parks
  • Fools of Fortune by William Trevor
  • The Thief and the Dogs by Maguib Mahfouz
  • Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons [or is this when we read her Ellen Foster?]
  • Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (January 16, 1994)
  • Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (January 24, 1994)
  • Household Saints by Francine Prose (March 7, 1994)
  • She Devil by Fay Weldon (March 21, 1994)
  • A River Sutra by Gita Mehta (April 4, 1994)
  • All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (May 2, 1994)
  • In Troubled Waters by Beverly Coyle (May 16, 1994)
  • Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (June 6, 1994)
  • Consider This, Senora by Harriet Doerr (June 20, 1994)

1992-1993

  • Black Ice by Loren Cary (September 15, 1992)
  • The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (September 29. 1992)
  • Friend of My Youth by Alice Munro (October 13, 1992
  • Two Lives by William Trevor (October 27, 1992)
  • The Tongues of Angels by Reynolds Price (November 10 1992)
  • Meridian by Alice Walker (November 24, 1992)
  • The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor (January 12, 1993)
  • Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg (January 26. 1993)
  • Patchwork by Karen Osborn (February 9, 1993)
  • Middle Passage by Charles Johnson (February 23, 1993)
  • Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler (March 9. 1993)
  • In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason (March 23 1992)
  • Fields of Glory by Jean Rouard (April 6 1993)
  • A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (April 20, 1993)
  • Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone (May 4 1992)
  • Bingo by Rita Mae Brown (May 18. 1993)

1990-1991

  • Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
  • An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
  • Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
  • Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
  • The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever
  • Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Cathedral by Raymond Carver
  • Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
  • During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase
  • Mr. Bedford and the Muses by Gail Godwin
  • Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (see also 2003)
  • The Joke by Milan Kundra
  • Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick
  • Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
  • The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
  • The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

List compiled by Sandra Howard, Kathy Diamond and Alison Clapp.