Schedule & Reading List
Socialization from 7:00p – 7:30p on meeting nights. Book discussion from 7:30p-until. The Amazon links below are affiliate links and proceeds are used to fill the beer fridge. If you can’t see the links, disable your adblocker for this site (whitelist).
Participation requires 2 commitments: we will make 50%+ of the meetings and we will read 50%+ of each book. Without these, our discussion is hindered by the lack of trust and common (reading) vocabulary.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Rocket Men – Robert Kurson
384 pages; 12:20 audiobook
The riveting inside story of three heroic astronauts who took on the challenge of mankind’s historic first mission to the Moon, from the bestselling author of Shadow Divers.
Drawn from hundreds of hours of one-on-one interviews with the astronauts, their loved ones, NASA personnel, and myriad experts, and filled with vivid and unforgettable detail, Rocket Men is the definitive account of one of America’s finest hours. In this real-life thriller, Kurson reveals the epic dangers involved, and the singular bravery it took, for mankind to leave Earth for the first time—and arrive at a new world.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Range – David Epstein
352 pages; 10:17 audiobook
David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
384 pages; 12:12 audiobook
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. When the body of a local man is found in the marsh, the locals immediately suspect her. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of murder.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) –
Carol Tavris & Elliot Aronson
400 pages; 9:04 audiobook
When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so, unconsciously, we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right—a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-justification—how it works, the damage it can cause, and how we can overcome it. This updated edition features new examples and concludes with an extended discussion of how we can live with dissonance, learn from it, and perhaps, eventually, forgive ourselves.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Endurance – Alfred Lansing
357 pages; 10:20 audiobook
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day’s sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic’s heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
166 pages; 8:21 audiobook
Few creatures of horror have seized readers’ imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein’s terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers and inspired countless writers of horror and suspense.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Just Mercy – Bryan Stevenson
368 pages; 11:05 audiobook
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine –
Gail Honeyman
336 pages; 11:02 audiobook
Eleanor Oliphant struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
When Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office, and they together save an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Bad Blood – John Carreyrou
352 pages; 11:37 audiobook
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.
“The story is even crazier than I expected…” – Bill Gates
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
Just Do Something – Kevin DeYoung
144 pages; 2:48 audiobook
With pastoral wisdom and tasteful wit, DeYoung debunks unbiblical ways of understanding God’s will and constructs a simple but biblical alternative: live like Christ. He exposes the frustrations of our waiting games and unfolds the freedom of finding God’s will in Scripture and then simply doing it.
This book is a call to put down our Magic 8-Balls and pick up God’s Word. It’s a call to get wisdom, follow Christ, be holy, and live freely. To just do something.
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
The Accidental President – A.J. Baime
528 pages; 14:21 audiobook
Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who get pushed into extraordinary circumstances, and through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history. Chosen as FDR’s fourth-term vice president for his well-praised work ethic, good judgment, and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man. That is, until he was shockingly thrust in over his head after FDR’s sudden death. The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during a tumultuous, history-making 120 days, when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Walkable City – Jeff Speck
320 pages; 6:45 audiobook
Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. Making downtown into a walkable, viable community is the essential fix for the typical American city; it is eminently achievable and its benefits are manifold. Bursting with sharp observations and key insights into how urban change happens―lays out a practical, necessary, and inspiring vision for how to make American cities great again.
What I Think 