Members of PCYC who share a love of reading meet monthly to discuss books over dinner.
Often, the host prepares a meal. Dinner is occasionally catered or the group may even meet at a local restaurant. Along with the food, there’s usually wine and always interesting conversation.
The discussions are a way to get to know a little more about people we already consider friends. The group meets the third Wednesday of each month at 6pm. All members who read the book are welcome. Simply contact the discussion leader for the month.
At the end of 2024 members were asked to suggest books to read for 2025. Below is the list of selections for the year.
JANUARY – James by Percival Everett
James is the re-imagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.
FEBRUARY – Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney
85 year old Lillian Boxfish takes a walk on New Year’s Eve through Manhattan, encounters a vibrant cross-section of its inhabitants and reminisces about her life, career and the myriad changes she has witnessed in New York City over the decades from when she was the highest paid advertising woman in the world in the 19302.
MARCH – American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
A Mexican bookseller and her son are forced to flee their comfortable life in Acapulco after her husband’s jounalist profile of a local drug lord is published. The novel follows her harrowing and dangerous trip to reach American Dirt.
APRIL – All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
This is a missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller and a love story all in one that takes place in the small Missouri town of Manta Clare in the 1970s
MAY – A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
A modernized retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear. The story is set on a thousand acre farm in Iowa owned by a family of a father and his three daughters. The novel is told from the point of view of the oldest daughter, Ginny. This novel is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
JUNE – Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit and a fierce talent for survival.
JULY – The Measure by Nikki Erlick
In a world where everyone receives a box revealing their lifespan, eight ordinary people grapple with the profound choice of whether or not to open it, and what to do with the information if they do. Their choices reveal a lot about the individual people and our society.
AUGUST – The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
A beautiful blue-blooded debutante, a tart-tongued London shop-girl, and a shy crossword-solving spinster join the fight against Nazi Germany at the end of World War II . The three female code-breakers at Bletchley Park must uncover a traitor and solve one last code to save England.
September – The Housekeepers by Alex Hay
On the night of London’s grandest ball, a bold group of female servants with little to lose plot a daring revenge heist against Mayfair society in this dazzling historical novel about power, gender and class.
OCTOBER – The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate
Set in contemporary Louisiana with flashbacks to post-reconstruction Texas this novel follows two storylines. The post civil war adventures of three women who undertake a journey from Louisiana to the open frontier of Texas and the efforts of a teacher in rural Louisiana to use the town’s painful past to compel her students to feel history and storytelling.
NOVEMBER – West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge
This novel is set during the 1938 dust bowl. It tells the story of a 17-year old boy who drives two giraffes cross-country with the old man in charge of the animals. Along the way he findsthrough the joys and conflicts of the voyage. The final destination of the animals is the San Diego Zoo and the first female zoo administrator.