Literary Society
About
Program designed to bring people together and support a local business is the Bixby Knolls Literary Society, our monthly community book club.
The discussions bring more people onto the corridor and can often spill over to an informal after-meeting session at a restaurant. The Literary Society focuses on the greatest American classics of the 20th century as well as current releases. Special guest discussion leaders and authors will participate in the group discussions. The Literary Society meets the second Wednesday of each month at Dream Come True Tea & Party Room at 7:00 pm.
Current Book for November 2024
201st Meeting
Checkout 19
by
Claire-Louise Bennett
Next Society Meeting:
Wednesday, November 13, 2024, 7:00pm
Dream Come True Tea & Party Room
4350 Atlantic Avenue
Parking is available along Atlantic Avenue
Checkout 19 is a novel by British writer Claire-Louise Bennett. It is Bennet’s second book, after 2015’s Pond. It was selected for The New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2022” list. The book was also shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, which seeks to celebrate novels which expand the possibilities of the novel as an art form. The novel follows an unnamed female narrator from early childhood to adulthood, documenting her interactions with books and how those interactions shaped her life. The book has been described as an example of autofiction, or a fictionalized, autobiographical account of Bennett’s life.
A NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER AND VOGUE
“Bennett writes like no one else. She is a rare talent, and Checkout 19 is a masterful novel.” –Karl Ove Knausgaard
From the author of the “dazzling. . . . and daring” Pond (O magazine), the adventures of a young woman discovering her own genius, through the people she meets–and dreams up–along the way.
Refreshments will be provided
Past Selections
200. North Woods by Daniel Mason
199. Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
198. This Other Eden by Paul Harding
197. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
196. Dayswork by Chris Bachelder & Jennifer Habel
195. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
194. Nutshell by Ian McEwan
193. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
192. How it all Began by Penelope Lively
191. Old Fifth by Jane Gardam
190. Trust by Hernan Diaz
189. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
188. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
187. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
186. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
185. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
184. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
183. Circe by Madeline Miller
182. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
181. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
180. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
179. The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
178. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
177. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
176. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
175. The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
174. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
173. Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
172. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
171. The Promise by Damon Galgut
170. The Trees by Percival Everett
169. The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung
168. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
167. Normal People by Sally Rooney
166. Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed
165. Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
164. What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
163. Anxious People by Fredrick Backman
162. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
161. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
160. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
159. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
158. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
157. The Door by Magda Szabo
156. The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes
155. Another Country by James Baldwin
154. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
153. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
152. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
151. The Plague by Albert Camus
150. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon 149. American Romantic by Ward Just
148. The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard
147. The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster
146. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
145. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
144. The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
143. Mercy Dogs by Tyler Dilts
142. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
141. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
140. No-No Boy by John Okada
139. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
138. The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge
137. A Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
136. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
135. An American Wedding by Tayari Jones
134. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
133. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
132. Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
131. Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto
130. A House For Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
129. Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald
128. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
127. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
127. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
126. Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers
125. The Counterlife by Philip Roth
124. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
123. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
122. Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
121. Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
120. Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
119. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bolgakov
118. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
117. Martin Eden by Jack London
116. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
115. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
114. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
113. Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane
112. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
111. Book of Unknown Americans by Christina Henriquez
110. Go Down Moses by William Faulkner
109. Don Casmurro by Joaquin Maria Machado de Assis
108. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
107. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
106. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
105. Blindness by Jose Saramago
104. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
103. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
102. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
101. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
99. The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
98. Bartelby and Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
97. Anybody’s Daughter by Pamela Samuels Young
96. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dosteovsky
95. Enemies, A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
94. Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
93. Dubliners by James Joyce
92. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Conner
91. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
90. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
89. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
88. Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
87. Stoner by John Williams
86. Middlemarch by George Eliot
85. Between Heaven and Here by Susan Straight
84. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
83. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
82. Animal Farm by George Orwell
81. The Stranger by Albert Camus, Translated by Matthew Ward
80. The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
79. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
78. Libra by Don DeLillo
77. The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text Paperback by Franz Kafka, Breon Mitchell, Translator
76. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
75. Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
74. Translated by Henry Reed
73. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
72. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
71. Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
70. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
69. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
67. Light Years by James Salter
66. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65. Atonement by Ian McEwan
64. Under the Net By Iris Murdoch
63. Play It As It Lays By Joan Didion
62. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
61. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
60. The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time by David L. Ulin
59. Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
58. The Garlic Ballads: A Novel by Mo Yan
57. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie By Jean Rhys
56. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
55. The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
54. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre
53. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
52. Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
51. I, Claudius By Robert Graves
50. The Age of Innocence By Edith Wharton
49. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
48. Money by Martin Amis
47. Black Warriors: The Buffalo Soldiers of World War II by Ivan J. Houston.
46. The Bridge by Evan S. Connell
45. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
44. My Antonia by Willa Cather
43. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
42. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
41. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
40. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy.
39. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
38. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. Call it Sleep: A Novel by Henry Roth
36. Tattoos on the Heart by Fr. Gregory Boyle
35. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
34. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet
33. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
32. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
31. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
30. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
29. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
28. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
27. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
26. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
25. In the Guise of Mercy by Wendy Hornsby
24. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
23. Wonderland by Joyce Carol Oates
22. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
21. The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
20. Light in August by William Faulkner
19. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
18. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
17. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
16. A Mass For the Dead by William Gibson
15. Beloved by Toni Morrison
14. Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor
13. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
12. Working by Studs Terkel
11. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
10. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. Native Son by Richard Wright
7. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
6. The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell
5. American Pastoral by Phillip Roth
4. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
3. Ask the Dust by John Fante
2. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
1. Holy Land by DJ Waldie