Book Discussion Group
About the Group
Founded in 1988, the Bucks County Community College Book Discussion Group meets from 7:30 to 9 p.m. on the second Thursday of the month during the academic year. Titles range from fiction to nonfiction, classics to recent publications, and are selected by group participants twice a year: in June for the fall semester and December for the spring semester. Discussions are moderated by Language & Literature Professor Michael Hennessey. The meetings are free and open to the public.
Discussions now take place live online using the Zoom web-conferencing tool. A limited number of spaces are available each month. If you are interested in joining a discussion, please contact Prof. Hennessey at [email protected] at least a week in advance of the date.
Spring 2025 Selections
Jan 9 – The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden(2024; 272 pages).
"was on the 2024 Booker Prize Short List. It is an exhilarating tale of twisted desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—and the legacy of one of the 20th century's greatest tragedies, WWII. It's a novel that explores the things that are kept from us as children, and the things we tell ourselves about our own hidden desires."
Feb 13 – Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty (2016; 380 pp).
"It's just the same things over and again for Sean Duffy. Riot duty. Heartbreak. Cases he can solve but never get to court. But what detective gets two locked room mysteries in one career? When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. But there are just a few things that bother Duffy enough to keep the case file open. Which is how he finds out that she was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond. And so Duffy has two impossible problems on his desk: who killed Lily Bigelow? And what were they trying to hide."
March 14 – Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (2024; 416 pp).
"From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a "vital" (The Washington Post) and "wickedly entertaining" (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor. Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and clean beauty who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian she has met by "cold bump"—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone she targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts"—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of old farms and prehistoric caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who believes that the path to emancipation is not revolt but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner's rendition of "noir" is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner's finest achievement yet."
April 10 – The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2016; 192 pp).
"Winner of Booker Prize and Nobel. Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman's struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her."
May 8 – Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (2024; 352pp).
"New York Times Bestseller • Shortlisted For The National Book Award • One Of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books Of The Year • A Time Must-Read Book Of The Year. Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others."
June 12 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2001; ~650 pp. depending upon edition).
"Pulitzer Prize Winner. A "towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book" (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon's "magnum opus" (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America's finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age."