Eclectic Book Club

Starting our 13th year of invigoratingly fun book discussion! The Lago Vista Library Book Club has now become known as the Eclectic Book Club. It meets monthly on the 2nd Thursday from 10:15 am to noon in the library meeting room (on Zoom during the pandemic). We like to read and discuss an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction. Our discussions are lively and we encourage you to come join the fray! Book-related field trips are also part of the fun. Hope to see you soon!

2024

February 8 - Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451
January 11 - Abraham Verghese - The Covenant of Water

2023

December 14 - Julian Barnes - Nothing to Be Frightened Of
November 9 - Bonnie Garmus - Lessons in Chemistry
October 12 - Phaedra Patrick - The Messy Lives of Book People
September 14 - Carson McCullers - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
August 10 - Andrew Sean Greer - Less
July 13 - Beverly Gage - G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
June 8 - Kerri Maher - The Paris Bookseller
May 11 - Max Hastings - The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962
April 13 - S. Kirk Walsh - The Elephant of Belfast
March 9 - John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
February 9 - Mark Kurlansky - Salt: A World History
January 12 - Nathaniel Ian Miller - The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven

2022

December 8 - Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club
November 10 - Vaclav Smil - How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
October 13 - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
September 8 - Dennis Overbye - Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance
August 11 - John Pollack - The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics
July 14 - January Reid - Let the People In: The Life and Times of Ann Richards
June 9 - Vicki Croke - The Lady and the Panda: The True Adventures of the First American Explorer To Bring Back China's Most Exotic Animal
May 12 - Robert Dugoni - The World Played Chess
April 14 - Melvyn Bragg - The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language
March 10 - Richard Powers - Bewilderment
February 10 - Amor Towles - The Lincoln Highway
January 13 - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumphs and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

2021

December 9 - Julia Phillips - Disappearing Earth
November 15 - Gale Tzemach Lemmon - The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice
October 14 - James MacBride - Deacon King Kong
September 9 - Peter Baker and Susan Glasser - The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
August 12 - no meeting
July 8 - Walter Isaacson - The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
June 10 - Erik Larson - The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz
May 13 - Charlotte McConaghy - Migrations
April 8 - Fredrik Backman - Anxious People
March 11 - Isabella Tree - Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm
February 11 - Brad Meltzer - The First Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill George Washington
January 14 - Malcolm Gladwell - Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

2020

December 10 - Jim Lehrer - The Phony Marine
November 12 - Robin DiAngelo - White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
October 8 - Ellen Carol Dubois - Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote
September 10 - T. C. Boyle - Friend of the Earth
August 13 - John Meacham and Tim McGraw - Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation
July 9 - Anne Griffin - When All Is Said
May 14 - Margaret Atwood - Testaments
April 9 - Adam Higginbotham - Midnight in Chernobyl
March 12 - Michael Chabon - Moonglow
February 13 - Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
January 9 - Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark

2019

December 12 - Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Chapters 5, 12, and final
November 14 - Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
October 10 - A. J. Baime - The Accidental President: Harry S Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World
September 12 - Richard Powers - The Overstory
August 8 - David Grann - Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
July 11 - Amor Towles - A Gentleman in Moscow
June 13 - Lawrence Wright - God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State
May 9 - Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
April 11 - Liza Mundy - Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
March 14 - Walter Isaacson - Leonardo da Vinci
February 14 - Elizabeth Crook - The Which Way Tree
January 10 - Gilbert King - Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

2018

December 13 - Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls
November 8 - John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley: In Search of America
October 11 - John Pfaff - Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform
September 13 - Elizabeth Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
August 19 - Osama Alomar - The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories
July 12 - Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway
June 14 - Ron Hall and Denver Moore - Same Kind of Different as Me
May 10 - Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Gene: An Intimate History
April 12 - Adam Minter - Junkyard Planet
March 8 - J. D. Vance - Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
February 8 - Helen Macdonald - H is for Hawk
January 11 - Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad

2017

December 14 - Barbara Kingsolver - Flight Behavior
November 9 - Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air
October 12 - Margaret Atwood - A Handmaid's Tale
September 14 - James Salzman - Drinking Water: A History
August 10 - Trevor Noah - Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
July 13 - Paulette Jiles - News of the World
June 8 - Catherine Gildiner - Too Close to the Falls
May 11 - Joseph Boyden - Three Day Road
April 13 - Mary Beth Rogers - Barbara Jordan: American Hero
March 9 - Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See
February 9 - Tom Wainwright - Narconomics
January 12 - Thomas Hardy - Far From the Madding Crowd

2016

December 8 - Frederick Backman - A Man Called Ove
November 10 - Elie Wiesel - Still Night
October 13 - Kerry Patterson et al. - Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
September 8 - Homer Hickam - Carrying Albert Home: The Somewhat True Story of a Man, His Wife and Her Alligator
August 11 - Dan Harris - 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Street Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works - A True Story
July 7 - Cancelled due to vacations
June 9 - Sam Harris - The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason
May 13 - D. W Buffa - The Judgment
April 14 - Alice Hoffman - The Marriage of Opposites
March 10 - James Loewen - Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything My American History Textbook Got Wrong
February 11 - Eric Larsen - Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
January 14 - Miranda R. Mouilott - A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War and a Ruined House in France

2015

December 10 - Atul Gawande - Being Mortal
November 12 - Ian McEwan - The Children Act
October 8 - Richard Funk - The Wind of the Gods
September 10 - Maajid Nawaz and Tom Bromley - Radical: My Journey of Islamist Extremism
August 13 - Joyce Carol Oates - Any work by her
July 9 - Andy Weir - The Martian
June 11 - Ursula Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
May 14 - Charles King - Midnight at the Pera Palace
April 9 - P.J. O'Rourke - The Baby Boom
March 12 - Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird and Marja Mills -The Mockingbird Next Door
February 12 - James Jones - From Here to Eternity
January 8 - P.G. Wodehouse - Any book featuring Jeeves the Butler

2014

December - Reza Aslan - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
November - Valerie Lawson - Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers
October - H. Gilbert Welch - Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in Pursuit of Health
September - Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson - Lone Survivor
Summer hiatus - no meetings due to busy schedules
April - Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land or Isaac Asimov's The Foundation Series. (Read and compare/contrast or read either book, your choice.)
March - Christopher Steiner - Automate This: How Algorithms Took Over Our Markets, Our Jobs and the World
February - Daniel Brown - Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (A potluck lunch and a showing of the Leni Riefenstahl movie documenting the 1936 Olympics will take place at this meeting.)
January - Elizabeth Black - The Drowning House: A Novel

2013

December - No meeting for the holidays
November - Jeffrey Toobin - The Oath
October - Doris Kearns Goodwin - Team of Rivals
August/September - Donald L. Miller - Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany
June - Philip Roth, any book
April - Peter Matthiesen - The Snow Leopard
March - Joe Nick Patoski - Writer, historian, Texan - any or all material written by him like Generations on the Land; Willie Nelson- an epic life; Big Bend National Park; Caught in the crossfire; Conjunto
February - Michael Shaara - The Killer Angels: a novel of the Civil War
January - Jane McGonigal - Reality is broken: why games make us better and how they can change the world

2012

December - Cheryl Strayed - Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail
November - Ann Rule - Bitter Harvest
October - Mark Updegrove - Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency
September - John Graves - Goodbye to a River
August - James Lee Burke - Black Cherry Blues: A Dave Robicheaux Novel
July - canceled
June - Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night: A Novel
May - David McCullough - Truman parts 3 to 6
April - Walter Isaacson - Steve Jobs
March - Karl Marlantes - What it is Like to Go to War
February - David McCullough - Truman
January - John Le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: A George Smiley Novel

2011

December - Daniel Quinn - Ishmael
November - Pat Conroy - My Reading Life
October - Siddhartha Mukherjee - The Emperor of All Maladies: A biography of Cancer
September - Sara Gruen - Water for Elephants
August - Evans S Connell - Son of the Morning Star
July - SG. Gwynne - Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches
June - Louis L'Amour - Hondo
May - Studs Terkel - Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times
April - Garth Stein - The Art of Racing in the Rain
March - Erik Larson - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
February - Kathryn Stockett - The Help
January - Paul Harding - Tinkers

2010

December - Elmer Kelton - The Time It Never Rained
November - Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses (first book of The Border Trilogy)
October - John Irving - Last Night in Twisted River
September - Ted Kerasote - Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
August - Erik Larson - Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
July - William Least Heat-Moon - Blue Highways: A Journey into America
June - Malcolm Gladwell - What the Dog Saw And Other Adventures
May - Willa Cather - Song of the Lark
April - Greg Mortenson - Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
March - Oscar Casares - Amigoland (Austin "Mayor's Book Club" selection)
February - Barbara Kingsolver - Lacuna
January - Wallace Stegner - Crossing to Safety

2009

December - Bryce Courtnay - Power of One
November - Larry McMurtry - Horseman, Pass By
October - H. Joaquin Jackson; David Marion Wilkinson - One Ranger