Third Mondays, 3pm
The Community Room at Oro Vista Village 600 S. Pacific Ave, Talent (map)
Love to read? Our all-genres book group welcomes everyone, mystery lovers, fiction fans, history buffs, and more. Come share your favorites and help us choose our future reading list. New voices and new ideas are always welcome!
Please RSVP to Roxolana at roxolanayoung@gmail.com.

Roxolana and Karen have been working hard, reading reviews and selecting books. Here’s what they found for the first half of 2026.

Month	Title	Author	Where to get it
January	Tell Me Everything	Elizabeth Strout	library 9 copies
February	Whistling Season	Ivan Doig	library book club bag
March	Orphan Train	Christina Baker Kline	library book club bag
April and May	Lies My Teacher Told Me	James W. Loewen	$5 on Thriftbooks, and when done you can take your copy to our local Talent bookstore, The Wren’s Nest to get credit towards your next book
June	Wild Dark Shore	Charlotte McConaghy	library has many copies – Paperback is $18 on Amazon, so reserve one soon
July	Awe	Dacher Keltner	library one copy, $10 on Biblio

Synopses

Tell Me Everything – A character driven novel about relationships and human longing, good for introspective reflective discussion. About how people are affected by their stories, and how understanding this shapes the way we treat people.

Whistling Season – The author, who lived and set his stories in Montana, said: “I don’t think of myself as a ‘western writer.’ To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate ‘region,’ the true home, for a writer. If I have any creed that I wish you as readers, necessary accomplices in this flirtatious ceremony of writing and reading, will take with you from my pages, it’d be this belief that writers can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing of that larger country: life.”

Whistling Season is the story of a remote farm in 1910, home to a farmer and his three sons. Also about the community one-room school. The character development is central and the creative solutions to problems is interesting. The joy of being a child, an inspiring teacher, a wise father. A comfortable winter read.

Orphan Train – about the unlikely friendship between a 91 year old woman and a troubled teenage girl who is doing community service with her. The story alternates between present day and depression era Minnesota, revealing the older woman’s past as an immigrant sent west on the orphan train, and the girl’s past as aging out of foster care. They form a bond that helps both women confront their pasts and find healing.

Lies my Teacher Told Me – Critiques high school history textbooks for whitewashing, oversimplifying, creating bland myths, lies and inaccuracies. Author delivers a valuable, though debated perspective—a vital counter-narrative.
Read NPR’s review. Roxolana loves this book, I could get into it, I like talking and learning about history. We gave it two months because it is long.

Wild Dark Shore – sounds like a lot of fun. A man lives with his kids on a remote Antarctic island, a research station that is also a deposit for seed storage and protection. A woman washes up on shore. A highly praised atmospheric novel blending climate fiction, psychological thriller, and family drama, immersive nature writing, compelling characters, haunting exploration of survival, loss and human connection. We’ll see.
The library has lots (hundreds) of audio and online copies, and a long wait list but a short wait because so many copies. 9 hardback copies, but a short wait list. We could possibly adjust when we read it by when we all get a copy.

Awe – How to rekindle awe in your life. Author, a psychology professor, has been teaching happiness at U of Berkeley. His answer: find awe! He attempts to find awe through history, through books and through talking to people, looking for awe in prisons and ordinary people, not just the privileged crowd.

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