Laurentian Book Club
Participation is free!
The Laurentian Book Club connects through a private forum where all participants can discuss the current book and network with each other. Joining is completely free, you just have to get a copy of the book to enjoy. Don't forget to checkout your local library for a copy of each book! The Book Club will read one book every two months so that you'll have plenty of time for each book.
To login, or sign-up and create an online profile, please visit: https://www.pbc.guru/stlawu/
Current Book:
May 24 - July 12, 2024
We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe
Book Synopsis:
A warm, funny, irresistible book that follows an improbable and life-changing college friendship over the course of forty years--from the best-selling author of The End of Your Life Book Club
By the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he had already met everyone he cared to know: the theater people, writers, visual artists and comp lit majors, and various other quirky characters including the handful of students who shared his own major, Latin and Greek. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. The jocks wore baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to be another species entirely, one Will might encounter only at his own peril.
All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud, and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL (where he would later serve for six years). Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other's lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation.
From New Haven to New York City, from Hong Kong and Panama to a remarkable school on an island in the Bahamas--through marriages and a divorce, triumphs and devastating losses--We Should Not Be Friends tracks an extraordinary friendship over decades of challenge and change. Schwalbe's marvelous new work is, at its heart, a joyful testament to the miracle of human connection--and how if we can just get past our preconceptions, we may find some of our greatest friends.
(Synopsis Source: goodreads.com)
Next Book:
August - October, 2024
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Questions?
Please contact our book club moderator, Jared, jared@pbc.guru and he will be happy to help!
The Books So Far...
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
April 29, 2019 - June 30, 2019
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
June 27, 2019 - August 15, 2019
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
August 29, 2019 - October 10, 2019
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
October 17, 2019 - December 5, 2019
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
January 6 - March 5, 2020
A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
March 19 - May 14, 2020
Choose Your Own Adventure: Summer 2020 - Read and discuss one, two or all three book options simultaneously!
May 28 - July 30, 202
- Contemporary Fiction - Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- Historical Non-Fiction - The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown
- Personal Development - The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
August 6 - October 8, 2020
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
October 15 - December 17, 2020
Talking to Strangers by Malcomb Gladwell
January 7 - March 11, 2021
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
March 18 - May 20, 2021
The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir by Michele Harper
May 27th - July 29th
The Leavers: A Novel by Lisa Ko
August 5 - October 4, 2021
The Book of Longing by Sue Monk Kid
October 14 - December 29, 2021
Artcurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History by Jennifer Dasal
January 6 - March 10, 2022
The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton
March 18 to May 13, 2022
Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood by Cheryl Diamond
May 27 - July 22, 2022
Great Circle: A Novel by Maggie Shipstead
August 5 - September 30, 2022
Honor: A Novel by Thrity Umrigar
October 14 - December 9, 2022
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
January 6 to February 24, 2023
Trust by Hernan Diaz
March 17 - May 17, 2023
The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston
May 26 - July 28, 2023
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
August 4 - September 30, 2023
This Tender Land: A Novel by William Kent Krueger
October 13 - December 1, 2023
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
January 5 - February 23, 2024
American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World by David Baron
March 15 - May 3, 2024