DISCUSSION GUIDES

Happy Hour is a book that could easily be dismissed as a boozy, hedonistic memoir of a summer. Yet “being easily dismissed” is precisely what it’s about. In an interview with the literary site Hazlitt, Marlowe Granados describes her impulse to write it: “I always wanted to write a book from the perspective of the type of girls who are always being observed but never seem to be making their own observations.” Elsewhere, she characterizes it differently: “Gala and Isa,” the girls in question, “want to have some sort of legacy, to have had a say in how they are perceived.” One of the lessons of Happy Hour is that beauty and luxury are not the same as excess and decadence. Gala and Isa are party girls, but they’re not rich. They weave a brocade of gem-like moments in 2013 New York where others would swipe a credit card and forget. Their lives are not the cynical exploitation of men nor the punishment of vain, “superficial,” or desperate women. They want to savor their existence: “to savor,” Isa says, “is to hold something...for more than a moment, to linger and draw out its details. Sometimes you are far too hungry to wait, and things get lost.” So you write them down to remember what your life consisted of. Your book club question: what gives fun meaning for Isa and Gala? Don’t dismiss that question with an easy answer. Work through some of the others below.

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young―but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

The Book of Atlantis Black will have you questioning facts, rooting for secrets, and asking what it means to know the truth.

Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and―at the same time―an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.

Honest, warm, and witty, this memoir reads like a chat with a dear friend sharing her insight and her vulnerabilities and taking us along as she heals. Complete with family stories over cocktails and a new friend named Claude, who happens to be a praying mantis.

The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist.

The inspiring, dramatic, and heartwarming true account of an escaped convict and his wife of thirty-five plus years who never knew his secret, which captured the imaginations of millions on Humans of New York.

A finalist for a PEN award and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this collection provides insight into small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power in twelve riveting short stories set in the United States and India.

Greenlights: Your Journal, Your Journey is a guided companion to the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Greenlights, filled with prompts, pithy quotes, adages, outlaw wisdom, and advice on how to live with greater satisfaction. Matthew has been writing in journals since he was fifteen years old. His adventures have taken him from Texas to Australia, from Mali to Peru—and he has chronicled them all. In this authentic, unconventional journal, the prompts encourage going inside: remembering, reflecting, and musing, and also going outside: adventuring, taking risks, and dreaming big. Who could be a better guide for seekers setting out on the road to understanding their lives inside and out, past, present, and future?

When Afi agrees to an arranged marriage with a wealthy man she has never met, she thinks she understands the rules she must play by in her home of Ghana. But she just might break them all in this must-read, captivating tale that questions issues of independence and identity. A Reese’s Book Club pick.