OWL has both Fiction and Non-Fiction Book Discussion Groups that are open to all! Come to one or all meetings. Books are available for check out at OWL.
Non-Fiction Discussion Group
When: Second Thursday of each month from 2:00 – 3:15 p.m.
Where: Meeting will be held In the Library’s Jamie Gagarin Community Room.
Staff Contact: Olivia DeFiore
Selection List for 2023–24
May 9
Caste: The Origin of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Beyond race or class, a powerful caste system influences people’s lives and the nation’s fate. Linking
the
caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, the author explores what underlies caste systems
across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, and stigma. Using riveting stories about people, she
shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Moderated by Laura
June 13
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
Drawing on his own experience as a war correspondent and on the literature of combat from Homer to
the present, the author shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies.
Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, this is a book whose truths
have never been more necessary. Moderated by Audrey
July 11
Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky
The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts in 2008 served Wall Street at the expense of the
public. The book reveals how our political system is captive to Wall Street and why the too-big-to-fail
banks are bigger and more dangerous in the wake of the crisis. The Dodd-Frank bill allowed banks to
grow larger while retaining smaller capital cushions. Moderated by Jeff
Fiction Discussion Group
When: Second Thursday of each month from 3:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Where: Meeting will be held In the Library’s Jamie Gagarin Community Room.
Staff Contact: Olivia DeFiore
Selection List for 2023–24
May 9
Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang
Joan is a thirty-something ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. Her parents were originally from
China. She is intensely devoted to her work and happily solitary, but family, neighbors and co-workers
try to shape her life according to their cultural and social expectations. Moderated by Cindy
June 13
The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble
When circumstances compel her to start over, an older woman moves to a run-down building in central
London – and begins to pour her soul into a diary. She is not exactly destitute. So, is the move perversity,
she wonders, a survival test, or is she punishing herself? How will she adjust to this curiously appealing
city? What can happen, at her age, to change her life? She describes her social circle and her attempts at
risk-taking in her new life. Moderated by Curry
July 11
Trust by Hernan Diaz
You can’t “trust” this novel – and that’s a very good thing. The story is primarily about a very rich man
and the stock market crash of 1929. Trust contains four distinct books in which different characters
provide conflicting accounts of the financier and his wife. The couple are secretive; the husband has new
money, the wife has an old name. Their fortune grows in spite of – or perhaps because of – the 1929
stock market crash. Moderated by Laura S.