Bring Your Own Book (BYOB) Club

Recommended by: Jean Kappes
Why did I like the book? Nonfiction that reads like a novel. Moby Dick was based on the true story of a very real whale that took a very real dislike to one whaleship. You'll learn all kinds of things while reading this very well-written book.
Publisher’s description: In the Heart of the Sea brings to new life the incredible story of the wreck of the whaleship Essex--an event as mythic in its own century as the Titanic disaster in ours, and the inspiration for the climax of Moby-Dick. In 1820, the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale, leaving the desperate crew to drift for more than ninety days in three tiny boats. Nathaniel Philbrick uses little-known documents and vivid details about the Nantucket whaling tradition to reveal the chilling facts of this infamous maritime disaster.

Recommended by: Rebecca Zucconi
Why did I like the book? Intriguing narrative point of view; compelling use of pandemic as a literary device.
Publisher’s Description:The Guardian In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics.

Recommended by: Lisa Coplit
Why did I like the book? This historical fiction book provides a glimpse into the life and culture of the Akha ethnic group of the Yunnan Province in China across about 40 years along with the long history and significance of tea in China - its production, economics, and traditions. The book does not shy from the brutality of poverty and also reveals many beautiful traditions and beliefs about tea and life.
Publisher’s Description: A thrilling new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa See explores the lives of a Chinese mother and her daughter who has been adopted by an American couple. A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

Recommended by: Xueying Ren
Why did I like the book? Characters in the book tried their best to live a life even in such a harsh time. From the book, I realize that hope is very important when we face difficulties in our life.
Publisher’s Description: Elisabeth and Theodore Weissberg, famous musicians, Hilde, a young film extra, and Vladek, an Eastern European adventurer wanted by the police on political charges, flee Nazi Germany for Shanghai at the onset of World War II. They enter the world of Jewish refugees, many of them artists and intellectuals, who must either starve or eke out an impoverished and sometimes degraded living, but they are determined to live intelligently, upholding the high culture, humor, and insofar as they can, the elegance of their former lives. Master storyteller Angel Wagenstein crafts an intense narrative of life and death, passionate love, and profound courage against the backdrop of the war and the millions of lives caught up in it.

Recommended by: Anna-leila Williams
Why did I like the book? Exquisitely written, beautifully crafted book about the folks in and around the Red Hook public housing complexes in Brooklyn, New York.
Publisher’s Description: James McBride's funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. In Deacon King Kong, McBride brings to vivid life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood's Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself. When the truth does emerge, McBride shows us that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.

Recommended by: Ellen Loura
Why did I like the book? I liked the fact that it was a true story, overcoming obstacles and a successful outcome.
Publisher’s Description: It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington's eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys' own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man's personal quest.

Recommended by: Saleh Rahman
Why did I like the book? From Equity Talk to Equity Walk offers practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, this book provides real-world steps that reinforce primary elements for examining equity in student achievement, while challenging educators to specifically focus on racial equity as a critical lens for institutional and systemic change.
Publisher’s Description: This book is a vital wealth of information for colleges and universities that seek to dismantle institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving equity, specifically racial equity to achieve equitable outcomes in higher education.

Recommended by: Mike Cole
Why did I like the book? An inside look at many of the ways that governmental policies favor the wealthy and contribute to greater poverty.
Publisher’s Description: In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and true freedom.

Recommended by: Jennifer Christopoulos
Why did I like the book? I liked the main character was able to come full circle, and ease his pain and guilt.
Publisher’s Description:
From the bestselling author of The Mountain Between Us comes the moving story of a man with a painful past, a little girl with a doubtful future, and a shared journey toward healing for both of their hearts. It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But the little girl's pretty yellow dress can't quite hide the ugly scar on her chest. Her latest customer, a bearded stranger, drains his cup and heads to his car, his mind on a boat he's restoring at a nearby lake. The stranger understands more about the scar than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner with its radio blaring is about to change the trajectory of both their lives. Before it's over, they'll both know there are painful reasons why crickets cry . . . and that miracles lurk around unexpected corners.

Recommended by: Ingrid Philibert
Why did I like the book? As a member of a Native tribe, Louse Erdrich's deep understanding of Native American culture and her insightful research into her grandfather's role in attempting to fight the 1950s effort to decertify Native American tribes, remove them from lands and disabuse them of right granted by contracts that were made to grant White Americans access to native lands deemed critical as part of the US manifest destiny Western expansion. Her true understanding of the subject when much of the literature in this area is rife with tropes, melodrama and bathos (not helping the people being covered in the narratives). In addition, a benefit for readers is the incredibly highly developed, believable, tragic and comic characters that emerge from every page, be they Native American or otherwise. Louise Erdrich is a master author. It's a tough read but a very rewarding one.
Publisher’s Description: Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C.