Book Club I
All Book Club I articles are collected here.
‘The Silent Patient’ by Alex Michaelides
Event Date:UMRA Book Club I will discuss The Silent Patient, a psychological thriller and debut novel by Alex Michaelides, when it meets via Zoom on Friday, July 17.
More...
Book Notes | ‘In Winter’s Kitchen’
Event Date:
'In Winter’s Kitchen' by award-winning food writer and author Beth Dooley is part memoir and part guidebook. It is a story about discovering community-based agriculture and finding delicious, healthy food even during winter. Autobiographical information about the author is woven into each chapter of the book.
More...
Book Notes | ‘The Alchemy of Us’
Event Date:
The things we take for granted required materials and humans working together to develop inventions including the telegraph, steel, medical treatments, photographic techniques, and the electronic devices we now depend on in our daily lives.
More...
Book Notes | ‘Where Rivers Part’
Event Date:
UMRA’s Book Club members learned a great deal about Hmong traditions, traumas, and relationships from acclaimed St. Paul author Kao Kalia Yang’s 'Where Rivers Part.' A tribute to her mother, this lyrical and complex book won the 2025 Minnesota Book Award in the memoir category.
More...
Book Notes | ‘Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend’
Event Date:
Members of the UMRA Book Club learned a lot from Susan Orlean’s book about the life and times of the dog rescued by an American soldier from a World War I battlefield, including the evolution of the movie industry from silent films to talkies, the development and increasing popularity of the German Shepherd breed, the use of dogs in World Wars I and II, and the domestication of animals from farm animals to pets.
More...
‘The Bohemian Flats’ by Mary Relindes Ellis
Event Date:UMRA’s Book Club I will discuss The Bohemian Flats by Mary Relindes Ellis when it meets via Zoom at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 20. Jim Lewis will lead the discussion.
More...Book Notes | ‘52 Loaves’
Event Date:
In William Alexander’s humorous memoir, readers are taken on a wild ride as he searches for the recipe and technique to replicate—from scratch—the “perfect bread.” He tries his hand at growing, harvesting, and threshing the wheat, attends a kneading conference in Maine, and even enrolls in a week-long bourlangerie class at the École Ritz Escoffier in Paris.
More...
Book Club I in December
Event Date:Meeting to plan books for next year.
More...
Book Notes | ‘An Unfinished Love Story’
Event Date:
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin turns personal in this illuminating memoir of the unparalleled 1960s and the life she shared with her husband of 42 years, Richard “Dick” Goodwin, speech writer and confidant of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert F. Kennedy.
More...
Book Notes | ‘The Cello Still Sings’
Event Date:
Author Janet Horvath was the associate principal cello of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1980 until 2012. The thrust of this story is about the her journey to uncover her father’s depravations during World War II, when he was forcibly relocated to a labor camp along with thousands of other Hungarian Jews.
More...
Book Notes | ‘West with the Night’
Event Date:
Figurative language, including personifications of animals and inanimate objects, give "West with the Night," a memoir by Beryl Markham, a poetic quality. As Ernest Hemingway said, “…She can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers—it really is a bloody wonderful book.”
More...
Book Notes | ‘Blue Ribbon’
Event Date:
Do you love the Minnesota State Fair and want to know more about its history? Then 'Blue Ribbon' by Karal Ann Marling, U of M professor emerita of American art and culture, is your chance.
More...
Book Notes | ‘Daisy Jones & the Six’
Event Date:
Written by New York Times bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid, "Daisy Jones & the Six" is about the rise of a fictional rock and roll band in the 1970s. It is also now a limited series available on Amazon Prime.
More...
Book Notes | ‘The Great River’
Event Date:
A storehouse of information, author John Boyce Upholt’s 2024 book is an ambitious take on the geological, hydrological, ecological, sociological, political, and historical story of the “mighty Mississippi.”
More...
Book Notes | ‘The Frozen River’
Event Date:
Author Ariel Lawhon's book of historical fiction is based on the real life of Martha Ballard, a midwife and healer in 1789 colonial Maine. Members of the UMRA Book Club liked the first-person narrative with Martha telling the story. Also, the descriptions of the woods and landscape, the Ballard mill, and the Kennebec River. It is a good read.
More...