B.Y.O.Book recommends...

The B.Y.O.Book "Books In Bars" book club had our second of three winter meetups at Brix Cheese Shop & Wine Bar last Tuesday to discuss Jon Ronson's The psychopath test : a journey through the madness industry.  Each session ends with us going around the room to announce what we're currently reading and I thought it would make a great booklist to share with those that couldn't attend.  There's still time to register for the next meetup where we'll be discussing Dept. of speculation by Jenny Offill, called one of the 10 Best Books of the Year - 2014 by the New York Times Book Review.

Fiction:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout.  2009 Pulitzer Prize winner. At the edge of the continent, in the small town of Crosby, Maine, lives Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher who deplores the changes in her town and in the world at large but doesn't always recognize the changes in those around her.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. Annie initiates an e-mail correspondence with Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylanish singer-songwriter, and a connection is forged between two lonely people who are looking for more out of what they've got.

The bastard's tale: A Dame Frevisse medieval mystery by Margaret Frazer. In fifteenth-century England, Dame Frevisse reluctantly leaves the sanctuary of her nunnery for the intrigues, high politics, and treachery of the royal court as she becomes embroiled in a plot that could threaten the throne of England itself.

The lowland : a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.

The secret place by Tana French (audiobook version). Investigating a photograph of a boy whose murder was never solved, aspiring Murder Squad member Stephen Moran partners with detective Antoinette Conway to search for answers in the cliques and rivalries at a Dublin boarding school.

Bone in the throat by Anthony Bourdain. When up-and-coming chef Tommy Pagana settles for a less than glamorous stint at his uncle's restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy, he unwittingly finds himself a partner in big-time crime.

A blink of the screen : collected shorter fiction by Terry Pratchett. A collection of short fiction spanning the author's career includes pieces from his school years, his early writing jobs, and the successful Discworld series.

Longbourn by Jo Baker. A reimagining of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" from the perspectives of its below-stairs servants captures the drama of the Bennet household from the sideline viewpoint of Sarah, an orphaned housemaid.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparents' desperate struggle for survival in the 1920s.

A spool of blue thread by Anne Tyler. The changing needs of aging parents impact a family gathering during which Abby Whitshank relates how her husband and she fell in love during the summer of 1959 and shared decades of marriage impacted by children and long-held secrets.

Leaving time : a novel by Jodi Picoult. Abandoned by a grief-stricken father and scientist mother who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, thirteen-year-old Jenna Metcalf approaches a disgraced psychic and a jaded detective in the hopes of finding answers.

Get in trouble : stories by Kelly Link. A collection of short stories features tales of a young girl who plays caretaker to mysterious guests at the cottage behind her house and a former teen idol who becomes involved in a bizarre reality show.

The bone tree by Greg Iles. A follow-up to Natchez Burning finds Southern lawyer Penn Cage desperately struggling to protect his father from false charges and corrupt officers by confronting the puppet master behind the Double Eagles terrorist group.

Stoner by John Williams. William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known.

The bone seeker by M. J. McGrath. A former polar bear hunter and Inuit guide in the Canadian arctic investigates after finding one of her summer school students dead near Lake Turngaluk, in the third novel of the mystery series.

The buried giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. As the wars that have ravaged Britain fade into the past, Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, set out on a journey to find the son they have not seen in years, and are joined in their travels by a Saxon warrior, his orphaned charge, and a knight.

Nonfiction:

All joy and no fun : the paradox of modern parenthood by Jennifer Senior.  Drawing on a vast array of sources in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology, a journalist challenges basic beliefs about parenthood, while revealing the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to life.

Not that kind of girl : a young woman tells you what she's "learned" by Lena Dunham. The creator and star of HBO's "Girls" documents her coming-of-age in and out of the spotlight, recounting her experiences with everything from dieting and embarrassing sex to dirty old men and performing in less-than-ideal conditions.

Lean in : women, work, and the will to lead by Sheryl Sandberg. The Facebook CEO and "Fortune" top-ranked businesswoman shares provocative, anecdotal advice for women that urges them to take risks and seek new challenges in order to find work that they can love and engage in passionately.

Dead wake : the last crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson. A chronicle of the sinking of the Lusitania discusses the factors that led to the tragedy and the contributions of such figures as Woodrow Wilson, bookseller Charles Lauriat, and architect Theodate Pope Riddle.

Silver screen fiend : learning about life from an addiction to film by Patton Oswalt. Reveals the author's addiction to film between 1995 and 1999, during which he absorbed classics and new releases three days a week and applied what he learned in these films to acting, writing, comedy, and relationships.

How to be alone : essays by Jonathan Franzen. The author presents his 1996 work, "The Harper's Essay," offering additional writings that consider a central theme of the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the increasing persistence of loneliness in postmodern America.

Undeniable : evolution and the science of creation by Bill Nye. Revealing the mechanics of evolutionary theory, the scientist, engineer, and inventor presents a compelling argument for the scientific unviability of creationism and insists that creationism's place in the science classroom is harmful to the future of the greater world.