I don’t usually join book clubs because I prefer not to have a schedule/commitment for reading but when my alumni association from my Alma mater announced a new book club, I was inclined to consider it…

The University of Illinois alumni book club gives readers two months to read a book which I appreciate (because I’m usually reading several at once).

Their first selection was a book I had previously read, loved, and written extensively about so I skipped that one. When they announced the next book I decided to read along, and I’m so glad I did.

The Glass Hotel: A novel

Not to be confused with The Glass Castle, this book is one I put on my early 2020 reading list, but I never got around to reading it at that point.

Vincent grows up on a remote island and while still very young marries an older man who is (unknown to her) leading a Ponzi scheme. Along the way we follow her brother and many of the unknowing Ponzi investors, as some of these stories overlap. This book takes a reader around and around in time and space to so many locations and perspectives it could be dizzying to some but for me it was a masterpiece.

I wasn’t even done with this book before I downloaded one of the author’s earlier books. This one was a bestseller years ago but I was tied up in my master’s work and didn’t read it then either. But it turned out to be perhaps, unfortunately, more relevant now because it is based on a pandemic.

Station Eleven

This book’s pandemic makes COVID look tame. The “Georgia flu” has a 3-4 hour incubation period and then the infected are dead within 2 days. No one survives it. But the book is more about the aftermath, as the characters’ lives, some as part of a traveling symphony and theater troupe, overlap in some ways with others surviving elsewhere, make sense of this new world where all they had in the past haunts them. Some of the minor characters are the same as in The Glass Hotel which I enjoyed. I’m still finishing up this book and plan to savor every page.

If you also missed these books upon publication I suggest picking them up now!