The Brown Baggers book club is preparing for a new “season” of reading, which will begin in June! Each December we host a potluck party to celebrate a year of reading and to recommend and choose new titles for our next batch of books (June-May). We enjoy reading a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction, but in our most recent round of voting, the nonfiction titles were hedged out in favor of historical fiction.
So we’re giving our members a bit of flexibility this upcoming year – if you find yourself at any point uninspired or uninterested in the fiction selection for the month, we encourage you to try a nonfiction companion title from the curated list we have below (or read fiction and nonfiction both, when you have extra time!). Come to book club prepared to share about the book you read; we believe we’ll have some really interesting dialogues as our fiction readers converse with our nonfiction readers.
June: Passing by Nella Larsen
nonfiction options:
A Chosen Exile: a history of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs
White Like Her: my family’s story of race and racial passing by Gail Lukasik
Black Lotus: a woman’s search for racial identity by Sil Lai Abrams
July: News of the World by Paulette Jiles
nonfiction options:
The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday
Earth Keeper: reflections on the American Land by N. Scott Momaday
The Three-Cornered War: the Union, the Confederacy, and native peoples in the fight for the West by Megan Kate Nelson
Born of Lakes and Plains: mixed-descent peoples and the making of the American West by Anne Hyde
The Captured by Scott Zesch (we don’t own this book, but “Jiles wrote that much of her account of Johanna’s alienation is based on The Captured”)
August: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
nonfiction options:
Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: an intimate history of domestic life in Bloomsbury by Alison Light
Upstairs & Downstairs: the illustrated guide to the real world of Downton Abbey by Sarah Warwick
September: The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesey
nonfiction option:
The Sibling Effect by Jeffrey Kluger
October: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James Cain
nonfiction option:
The Girl on the Velvet Swing: sex, murder, and madness at the dawn of the twentieth century by Simon Baatz
November: The Paris Library by Janet Charles
nonfiction options:
The Monuments Men: Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history by Robert Edsel
Americans in Paris: a literary anthology edited by Adam Gopnik
Part of Our Lives: a people’s history of the American public library by Wayne Wiegand
December: no book
January: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
nonfiction options:
Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country: traveling through the land of my ancestors by Louise Erdrich
Rez Life: an Indian’s journey through reservation life by David Treuer
Unworthy Republic: the dispossession of Native Americans and the road to Indian territory by Claudio Saunt
Coyote Warrior: one man, three tribes, and the trial that forged a nation by Paul VanDevelder
February: My Monticello by Jocelyn Johnson
nonfiction options:
Documenting Hate: Charlottesville & New American Nazis (PBS documentary)
Beyond Charlottesville: taking a stand against white nationalism by Terry McAuliffe
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello by Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Black is the Body: stories from my grandmother’s time, my mother’s time, and mine by Emily Bernard
The Fire This Time: a new generation speaks about race edited by Jesmyn Ward
March: Same Page Community Read
April: Matrix by Lauren Groff
nonfiction options:
Cathedrals and Abbeys of England and Wales: the building church, 600-1540 by Richard Morris
Devon’s Torre Abbey: Faith, Politics, and Grand Designs by Michael Rhodes
May: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
nonfiction options:
Black Silent Majority: the Rockefeller drug laws and the politics of punishment by Michael Fortner
You might also enjoy a book about the Harlem Riot of 1964. Here are two options (unfortunately we don’t own either, but ILL is an option!): The Harlem Uprising by Christopher Hayes or In The Heat of Summer by Michael Flamm
What great nonfiction books that would pair well with our fiction titles this year did we miss? Comment below to add your recommendations!