Post Type Archives: VBC Events

This is a book that I’ve truly “lived with.” I’ve been thinking and occasionally writing about it for a long time, and when I’m asked to recommend the ideal book for understanding Italy’s fascinating, complex history and culture, The Leopard is my go-to choice. I wrote about it in My Two Italies because it offers […]

Ever since her Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies in 1999, Lahiri has been considered one of the most brilliant stylists of her generation and beyond because of her gorgeous, limpid prose and profound insights into the human emotions. A writer who straddles many different worlds – born in London to Indian parents, she was raised in […]

This book has been the darling of “physical” book clubs throughout the country, and is one of those rare works that is both a bestseller and critically acclaimed: the gorgeously written Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell! We will discuss this recently published novel, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times […]

There’s many reasons I’m so enthusiastic about this choice: as the book’s description notes, it “tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside” – […]

This “late Hemingway” novel will transport you to the Paris of the author’s youth, where he honed his literary craft in the dizzyingly avant-garde expat community that included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and many other giants of twentieth-century literature. In Hemingway’s own words, “there is never any end to Paris”–nor is there […]