BOOK CLUB

Overview

As I mention elsewhere on this website, reading is neither as easy as it seems like it should be, nor is it as
impossible to get better at it as a lot of mediocre readers think. You can get better by practicing reading
for one thing. You can also improve your reading by thinking about how you read, by figuring out what
you can do to improve the quality of your reading, and by making connections between talking about what
you read and writing about what you read. Becoming a better reader will also help you become a better
writer. Book club will give you experience in these kinds of practices that good readers engage in.

Book Club is about the long haul. At some point in your college and life careers you’ll have to read
something long that takes some time to do and is maybe not what you would pick up to read in your spare
time. That’s what book club is designed to help you do.

What? Did you think I was going to give you some speech about the joy of reading? I admit: I love to read.
I could spend entire days reading if I had endless free time. But I know that most people are not that way.
Do I think that you can learn to enjoy reading certain books? Yes. Do I hope you’ll enjoy the book you read
for this class? Absolutely. But I’m not counting on it. My job is to help you read, remember, and usefully
write about a book even when you are not interested in it. Reality is, you will have to read very difficult
texts that you do not enjoy all the time throughout your college career. The goal of book club is to teach
you how to successfully do that.

Welcome to book club.

Details. You will be evaluated on your attendance and effort during book club meetings, the quality of
your book club journals, and your final projects. I have placed you into groups already and in the first
week of class will ask you to pick what book you want (I use the term “pick” loosely) from the list below.
You’ll meet with your book club leader for the first time beginning the week of 9/13 and every Monday
from then on out through the end of November.

HOW TO DO BOOK CLUB

1. Forming Groups, Picking Texts. During the first days of class, you will get into groups and select your
texts from the books listed below. You will need to choose your text as a group. Each group will pick a
number that determines the order of which group gets to pick first, second, etc. I tell you this because no
two groups will read the same book, and you may not get to read your first choice. Sorry. That’s life.

2. Where/When Book Clubs meet. As I say here and elsewhere, Book Club is one of the activities you will
participate in in order to earn your 1 credit for ENGL 144. That means that you will meet during the class
period your ENGL144 book club group is scheduled for. Book clubs will start the week of 9/13. They meet
on Zoom. The links for your weekly zoom meetings are located in your ENGL144 Blackboard
course under Zoom links. I will explain to you how to log in to your meeting via Blackboard. I will also
explain how to use your group discussion board and journal space in Blackboard. This part can seem
confusing at first, but after that first week it will become routine. You will need to locate a quiet space on
campus to go to and log on Zoom after ENGL101 before your book club time begins.
3. Read the Book. And I mean it. Read the book on your own time, a little at a time. Figure out during your
first book club meeting how many pages you should be reading per week. Add up the pages of the book
and divide it by the number of book club meetings you have. Keep a few meetings free to work on your
book club presentation (you should be done reading the book by Thanksgiving). Do not be that person
that lets your entire group down by not reading.

4. Write a Book Club Journal. At the start of each book club, you’ll have the chance to reflect on your
reading in writing. Your book club journals will be responses to prompts given by your
facilitator that you compose in the Google Doc book club journal I have set up for you.
These are located within the group discussion boards in your ENGL144 blackboard course.
Each Group has its own section in the Blackboard ENGL144 site. Within each group is a
discussion board. The first forum is Google Doc Book CLub Journal links. For the first entry
you will see the template I have set up that you can fill in. You can then do the same format each week.
Your fellow group members, facilitator, and myself will all have access to your journals so please keep this
in mind as you write. This will also help generate conversation in your group discussions.

I will read them and give you comments on them using the Google Doc comment feature. When you get
those comments back, you can respond to them in the next journal you write or using the comments
function as well.. You can also use my comments to help you talk about the book in book club.

5. Talk about the Book. After you are done writing your journals, you will have some time to talk about the
book. I would suggest starting the book clubs by reading your journals out loud to each other. That will get
things started. Another thing you could do, as I say above, is read my comments out loud to each other.
And the added bonus there is that it will kill time because it will take awhile for you to figure out my
handwriting. You can also talk about what is confusing to you. You can talk about what is funny or sad or
scary or interesting or boring in the book. Just, you know, talk about the book. It might feel weird at first,
but you can do it.

NOTE: Your facilitator is NOT there to lecture. They just want to help you talk about the book. They’ve
given up their time to work with you. They want you to succeed. So I mean it: be nice to them. And, more
than that, be a fun and interesting part of their day, for crying out loud. Make them want to do this
another semester. Make them look forward to meeting you each week. Make them happy that they gave up
their lunch break to read and talk about a book with you.

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED WITH THE BOOK

1. First, write a book cub journal reflection. During the book club meeting when you are all done with the
book, write a reflection on the experience. Write about all of the following

How did writing about the book in the journal help or not help you to read better?

How did talking about the book with others in the book club help or not help you to read better?

How did doing a little research about parts of your book help or not help you to read better?
Did you learn anything about how you might read other books for other classes from doing this project?

In the end, what did you think of your book?

2. Project Time. The project should be the last thing you do in book club, and should not be the thing that
dominates your conversations about the book all semester long. Specifics about what you will need to do
for the project will come to you after midterm.

ONE MORE THING

Participation in book club is one of the ways you will earn your one credit in ENGL144. And so, in the
interest of making sure this is perfectly clear, I will now repeat the attendance policy as it appears in the
Policies for this course (please note, in particular, the bolded portions of the passage):

Attendance: What happens in class each day only works if everyone is here to participate in
synchronous classes each week and completes all assignments on time on asynchronous days. Considering
how limited our time is together, I suggest you attend class. Synchronous classes, conferences, and
weekly discussion boards (asynchronous) count toward attendance. You may fail the course after 6
absences. Attendance in 101 and 144 is counted separately.

You will receive extra credit (in 101 and/or 144) for attendance based on the chart below:

0 absences = 3 points on final grade

*Points are added on to your final letter grade

ABOUT ENGL144 AS IT RELATES TO THE ATTENDANCE POLICY FOR 101: As mentioned

● The attendance policy described above applies to the writing conferences you will schedule with
your Writing Fellow: missing a writing conference counts as missing a class.
● The attendance policy applies to the book club meetings scheduled directly after this class:
missing book club counts as missing a class.
Book Club Books for Fall 2020

FICTION

Orange, Tommy. There, There. Vintage; Reprint edition (May 7, 2019)

ISBN-13: 978-0525436140 Paperback

The novel follows twelve characters from Indigenous communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland
Powwow, all connected to each other in ways they may not yet realize. There is Jacquie Red Feather,
newly sober and working to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, who is pulling
his life back together after his uncle’s death, has come to work at the powwow to honor his memory.
Fourteen-year-old Orvil has come to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this
chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful
history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. There
There is at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, utterly contemporary and always unforgettable.

Laila, Lalami. The Other Americans Vintage; Reprint edition (March 17, 2020)

ISBN-13: 978-0525436034 Paperback

Late one night, Driss Guerraoui—father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant—is hit and killed
by a speeding car. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's
daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for
good; her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented
witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s
and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets; Anderson, a
neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself. As the characters tell their
stories, connections among them emerge. The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder
mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.

Kupersmith, Violet. Build Your House Around My Body. 2021

ISBN0812993322

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have
their revenge.
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family loses her way in an abandoned rubber
plantation while fleeing her angry father and is forever changed.

2011: A young, unhappy Vietnamese American woman disappears from her new home in Saigon
without a trace.

The fates of these two women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by
ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. Alongside them, we
meet a young boy who is sent to a boarding school for the métis children of French expatriates, just
before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule; two Frenchmen who are trying to start
a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication
Co., who find themselves investigating strange occurrences in a farmhouse on the edge of a forest.
Each new character and timeline brings us one step closer to understanding what binds them all.

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. Anchor; Reprint Edition (January 30, 2016)

ISBN-13: 978-0345804327 Paperback

Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is
on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently
arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and
escapes with him. In Whitehead's conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor:
engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels. Cora embarks on a
harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of
her own world at each stop. As Whitehead re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the
saga of our nation.