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Bath House Book Club


The Bath House Book Club was founded in January 2014 and has been going steady(ish) ever since. Originally the book club was made up of several of my roommates in the Bath House: Age, Jess, Hil, me, and our friend Vanessa. With the ever shifting composition of the book club, we keep things up these days on a Facebook group and meet up with everyone who lives locally. The format, however, remains unchanged—we rotate choosing the book and hosting the accompanying discussion, so over the two years we've read a wide breadth of things!

Below is a chronological list of the selections of the BHBC, with a couple quotes thrown in for good measure:

Cheryl Strayed | Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

"It struck me that distant cities are designed precisely so you can know where you came from. We bring home with us when we leave."   Colum McCann | Let the Great World Spin  also quoted here

Brian Doyle | The Wet Engine  quoted here

Jeannette Walls | The Glass Castle

Kim Edwards | The Memory Keeper's Daughter (full disclosure: I read about the first 30 pages and wasn't a huge fan so I didn't actually finish this book)

Katie Heaney | Never Have I Ever

"There are so many people. It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined. I feel like this is an important idea, one of those ideas that your brain must wrap itself around slowly, the way pythons eat."   John Green | Paper Towns

Sue Monk Kidd | The Secret Life of Bees

C.S. Lewis | Till We Have Faces  quoted here

David James Brown | The Boys in the Boat

"In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it has a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. . . . Unlike your experiencing self—which is absorbed in the moment—your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valley of misery but also how the story works out as a whole."   Atul Gawande | Being Mortal

Susannah Cahalan | Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

currently reading: Malcolm Gladwell | David and Goliath
 . . . . 

Have you ever been in a book club or are you in one? What have been your favorite things to read with a group? I think there is definitely an art to choosing a good book club book, and I always love to hear more ideas!

you are not alone in this

This song ("Timshel" by Mumford and Sons) is about East of Eden. I loved it before, but after learning of the connection—and then relistening and realizing for myself, because once you have read the book it is fairly obvious from the title of the song to the plot references in the lyrics—has made me love it even more, as the words have a deeper and more profound meaning connected with the message of that book.

East of Eden touched me deeply and this song portrays how and what (does that make sense? maybe?) I drew from it.


And you have your choices
and these are what make man great,
his ladder to the stars.
But you are not alone in this.

East of Eden

just because I like oak trees (and texture), and they feature in this story as part of the valley landscape

"No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us."     —John Steinbeck, East of Eden  p. 266

I loved this book, oh, how I loved this book. John Steinbeck might be my favorite author (Miss Indecisive here). The only other author whose work I have read as extensively as I have Steinbeck's is Jane Austen, and while I love her clever observations and quick wit, there is something about Steinbeck's writings I cannot get enough of. I love the way he writes about people and the ways in which he describes places and feelings and human experience. My mom spent a summer in high school reading all of the Steinbeck selections at her local library and I think part of my love of Steinbeck stems from her influence.

As I read this story I thought of the natural man and these verses in 2 Nephi 4:

17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.

18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.

19 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.

20 My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.


This book is a beautiful retelling of a familiar Biblical story and I love the deeply religious themes and its sense of hope, just as this verse gives us hope with one little word: unless.
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