The Happy Valley Library Book Group has been meeting regularly since 2013. Check out this list to see all the books and short stories we have read and discussed. Join us for the next one!
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2025
- January: This Time Tomorrow/Straub
- February: The Maid/Prose
- March: Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love/Shapiro
- April: Happiness Falls/Kim
- May: The Rabbit Hutch/Gunty
- June: A Generous Nature/Houle
- July: Let Us Descend/Ward
- August: Flying Solo/Holmes
- September: Bear/Phillips
2024
- January: Perestroika in Paris/Smiley
- February: The Violin Conspiracy/Slocumb
- March: Mercury Pictures Presents/Marra
- April: Deacon King Kong/McBride
- May: Beasts of a Little Land/Kim
- June: No meeting (due to construction)
- July: No meeting (Happy 4th of July!)
- August: No meeting (due to construction)
- September: Early Morning Riser/Heiny
- October: Family Lore/Acevedo
- November: The Librarianist/deWitt
- December: Crying in H Mart/Zauner
2023
- January: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law/Roach
- February: Our Country Friends/Shteyngart
- March: The Liar’s Dictionary/Williams
- April: The Sympathizer/Nguyen
- May: Such a Fun Age/Reid
- June: The Henna Artist/Joshi
- July: The House of Broken Angels/Urrea
- August: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev/Walton
- September: The Swimmers/Otsuka
- October: River of the Gods/Millard
- November: The Other Black Girl/Harris
- December: Counterfeit/Chen
2022
- January: Interior Chinatown/Yu
- February: A Thousand Ships/Haynes
- March: Black Buck/Askaripour
- April: Conviction/Mina
- May: Normal People/Rooney
- June: Gold Diggers/Sathian
- July: Sourdough/Sloan
- August: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie/Benedict
- September: Furious Hours/Cep
- October: The Reading List/Adams
- November: The Hidden Life of Trees/Wohlleben
- December: The Kitchen Front/Ryan
2021
- January: Surprise Me/Kinsella
- February: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend/Bivald
- March: Long Way Down/Reynolds
- April: The Underground Railroad/Whitehead
- May: Disappearing Earth/Phillips
- June: Maid/Land
- July: Nothing to See Here/Wilson
- August: The Miniaturist/Burton
- September: One by One/Ware
- October: Save Me the Plums/Reichl
- November: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane/See
- December: The Stranger in the Woods/Finkel
2020
- January: New Year’s Party!
- February: The Travelling Cat Chronicles/Arikawa
- March: How to Walk Away/Center
- April: The Bird King/Wilson
- May: An American Marriage/Jones
- June: The Tenth Muse/Chung
- July: Their Eyes Were Watching God/Hurston
- August: My Name is Lucy Barton/Strout
- September: The Turner House/Flournoy
- October: The Water Dancer/Coates
- November: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter/McCullers
- December: Heart Berries/Mailhot
2019
- January: Lost Lake/Allen
- February: Astoria/Stark
- March: Nutshell/McEwan
- April: Station Eleven/Mandel
- May: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry/Backman
- June: A Visit from the Goon Squad/Egan
- July: No meeting (Happy 4th of July!)
- August: The Astronaut Wives Club/Koppel
- September: Asymmetry/Halliday
- October: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine/Honeyman
- November: News of the World/Jiles
- December: In the Midst of Winter/Allende
2018
- January: Wait for Signs/Johnson
- February: The House Girl/Conklin
- March: The Wangs vs. the World/Chang
- April: The Red Garden/Hoffman
- May: Behind the Beautiful Forevers/Boo
- June: Small Blessings/Woodruff
- July: Rise & Shine, Benedict Stone/Patrick
- August: Be Frank with Me/Johnson
- September: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky/Durrow
- October: The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion/Flagg
- November: Euphoria/King
- December: Goodbye, Vitamin/Khong
2017
- January: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry/Joyce
- February: The Round House/Erdrich
- March: Tale for the Time Being/Ozeki
- April: The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty/Vida
- May: The Lost City of Z/Grann
- June: The Dog Stars/Heller
- July: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County/Baker
- August: The Vacationers/Straub
- September: As Husbands Go/Isaacs
- October: Burial Rites/Kent
- November: Tallgrass/Dallas
- December: The Things We Keep/Hepworth
2016
- January: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore/Sloan
- February: My Antonia/Cather
- March: Boy, Snow, Bird/Oyeyemi
- April: Code Name: Verity/Wein
- May: Remarkable Creatures/Chevalier
- June: Pirate Hunters/Kurson
- July: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry/Zevin
- August: The Paris Wife/McLain
- September: Our Souls at Night/Haruf
- October: Lila/Robinson
- November: Where’d You Go Bernadette/Semple
- December: The Rosie Project/Simsion
2015
- January: No meeting
- February: Mudbound/Jordan
- March: Mink River/Doyle
- April: Barbarian Nurseries/Tobar
- May: A More Perfect Heaven/Sobel
- June: The Madonnas of Leningrad/Dean
- July: No meeting
- August: The Bartender’s Tale/Doig
- September: The Chaperone/Moriarty
- October: The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving/Evison
- November: Juliet/Fortier
- December: Holidays on Ice/Sedaris
2014
- January: No meeting
- February: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn/Smith
- March: Nothing Daunted/Wickenden
- April: The Elegance of the Hedgehog/Barbery
- May: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand/Simonson
- June: Cuckoo’s Calling/Galbraith
- July: No meeting
- August: A Partial History of Lost Causes/DuBois
- September: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk/Fountain
- October: We Need New Names/Bulawayo
- November: Sacre Bleu/Moore
- December: No meeting
2013
- January: No meeting
- February: A Moveable Feast/Hemingway
- March: The American Heiress/Goodwin
- April: My Abandonment/Rock
- May: The Imperfectionists/Rachman
- June: The Geography of Bliss/Weiner
- July: No meeting
- August: The Spellman Files/Lutz
- September: The Tiger’s Wife/Obreht
- October: The Postmistress/Blake
- November: The Lonely Polygamist/Udall
- December: The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey/Mosley
Short Stories
As a way to connect with our happy Valley readers during our closure from COVID-19 (and a little while after we were back open) we would talk about something we read every week. The first Thursday of the month was still reserved for our regular Book Group meeting. Every other Thursday we would read and discuss a short story. Below is the list of everything we read during this period. There are some absolute gems in there! All the stories are available online; just click on the link.
- 1/27/22: “Three Exhausting Weeks” by Tom Hanks
- 1/13/22: “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” by Zen Cho
- 12/16/21: “Dolls’ Eyes” by A. S. Byatt
- 12/9/21: “Hotel Seattle” by Lily King
- 11/18/21: “Remedies” by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
- 10/28/21: “For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll
- 10/14/21: “Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law” by Lavie Tidhar
- 9/30/21: “House for Sale” by Colm Tóibín
- 9/23/21: “On the Lonely Shore” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- 9/16/21: “Crystal Palace” by Carribean Fragoza
- 9/9/21: “Pity and Shame” by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 8/26/21: “The Angel of Khan el-Khalili” by P. Djèlí Clark – Read | Listen
- 8/19/21: “Jonathan” by Rosamunde Pilcher
- 8/12/21: “A Bleed of Blue” by Amy Key
- 7/29/21: “All Saints’ Mountain” by Olga Tokarczuk
- 7/22/21: “Faith” by Sayaka Murata
- 7/15/21: “Gooseberries” by Anton Chekhov
- 7/8/21: “Standard Loneliness Package” by Charles Yu
- 6/24/21: “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link
- 6/17/21: “Playing Kerri Strug” by Kiley Reid
- 6/10/21: “Chance Me” by Caitlin Horrocks
- 5/27/21: “B & B” by Celeste Ng
- 5/20/21: “The Fruit of My Woman” by Han Kang
- 5/13/21: “The Summer After the War” by Kazuo Ishiguro
- 4/29/21: “Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu – Read | Listen
- 4/22/21: “The Deep” by Anthony Doerr
- 4/15/21: “Shakespeare, New Mexico” by Valeria Luiselli
- 4/8/21: “Sleep” by Haruki Murakami
- 3/25/21: “Two Sad Clowns” by Elizabeth McCracken
- 3/18/21: “Galatea” by Madeline Miller
- 3/11/21: “Motherland” by Min Jin Lee
- 2/25/21: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
- 2/18/2021: “Asunder” by Nnedi Okorafor
- 2/11/2021: “What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky” by Lesley Nneka Arimah
- 1/28/2021: “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver
- 1/21/2021: “The Hermit’s Story” by Rick Bass
- 1/14/2021: “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges
- 12/17/2020: “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang
- 12/10/2020: “Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Northumbria” by Brandon Taylor
- 11/19/2020: “Postcards from the Apocalypse” & “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” by Rebecca Roanhorse
- 11/12/2020: “New Jesus” by Tommy Orange
- 10/29/2020: “The Upstairs People” by Laura van den Berg
- 10/22/2020: “The Second Bakery Attack” by Haruki Murakami
- 10/15/2020: “Safe Passage” by Ramona Ausubel
- 10/8/2020: “The Antique Ring” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- 9/24/2020: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
- 9/17/2020: “I Sing the Body Electric” by Ray Bradbury
- 9/10/2020: “The Night Garden” by Shruti Swamy
- 8/27/2020: “The Foster Portfolio” by Kurt Vonnegut
- 8/20/2020: “The Line” by Amor Towles
- 7/30/2020: “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane
- 7/23/2020: “The Barn at the End of Our Term” by Karen Russell
- 7/16/2020: “Omakase” by Weike Wang
- 7/9/2020: “Aguacero” by Patricia Engel
- 6/25/2020: “The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin
- 6/18/2020: “202 Checkmates” by Rion Amilcar Scott
- 6/11/2020: “Recitatif” by Toni Morrison
- 5/28/2020: “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
- 5/21/2020: “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu
- 5/14/2020: “Tenth of December” by George Saunders
- 4/30/2020: “A Room in Baltimore” by Madeleine L’Engle
- 4/23/2020: “All Will Be Well” by Yiyun Li
- 4/16/2020: “The Apologizer” by Milan Kundera
- 4/9/2020: “Anything You Might Want” by Anjali Sachdeva