What They're Reading

By Patti Hartog




Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Beginnings of the FBI by David Grann
The Sunday Evening Book Club is a co-ed group started more than 27 years ago, when the first selections included Understanding Islam, The Education of Little Tree, and A Year in Provence. Membership has evolved over the years and still includes a few of the original members. The book club meets once a month at 7pm on Sundays, rotating between members’ homes. Books are chosen at the end of each meeting for the following month, alternating between fiction and non-fiction and including at least one classic each year. Linda and Chris Valentine, members of the group for the past eight years, discussed their thoughts on a recent selection, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Beginnings of the FBI by David Grann.

Get Caught Up in a Good Book

By Patti Hartog


The Forum At Brookside Book Club has been meeting for over seven years, with 20-25 residents regularly participating. The group meets in the living room in the Forum at Brookside Pavilion. Through participation in the book club, residents find opportunities to interact with one another and form new relationships. It creates a safe meeting place where people from different backgrounds, political parties, and religious denominations can freely share ideas and opinions. Discussions are led by Mark Clifford, director of recreation at The Forum. Mark shared thoughts on the group’s recent selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer.

Pump Up Your Summer Reading List

By Patti Hartog


The New Directions book club, a group of avid readers has a deep appreciation for the perspective each member brings to the monthly book discussions. We caught up with Robert York, who led the recent discussion of their summer read My Antonia by Willa Cather.

What books does she recommend?

The Epicurious Readers book club meets the second Wednesday of every month at various restaurants around Louisville that “mostly” match whatever book they are reading. As a group of excited foodies and culturists varying in age from mid-40s to mid-80s with many different life experiences and perspectives (there are two mother-daughter combos and one husband and wife pair in the group), discussion is always lively and fun. Book club leader Michelle Maxim shares a memorable quote from the group’s latest novel, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, as well as thoughts about one of her favorite books of all time.

Have you read these books?

The Brown Bag and a Book club recently discussed Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, a book set in the late 1970s and centered on a family caught up in animal experimentation with regards to behavioral science. Team services librarian Renata Sancken, who facilitated the meeting, shares some of her thoughts about the book and talks about the best book she’s ever read.

The Whole World in a Book

Book club member Cynthia Robinson enjoys the discussion of Ann Patchett's State of Wonder during a meeting of the Mayor's Book Club, held at the Louisville Free Public Library.

Photographs flashed across a projector screen. A dull-gray sloth, a lush rainforest, a tribal woman in a sack dress and red face paint — each image flickered into the Centennial Room of the Louisville Public Library on York Street for about 10 seconds, transporting the members of the Mayor’s Book Club to the edges of the Amazon, before slowly fading away.

A dozen men and women sat in a scattered circle, each leafing through a copy of State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. It’s a story about a pharmaceutical company employee who journeys to Brazil to bring back information about drug research being conducted in the jungle by a mysterious doctor. Even more important, she is charged with recovering the personal effects of a colleague who died there under mysterious circumstances.