Women Faculty Book Club

The Women Faculty Book Club at FIU, like so many others, meets to affirm our membership in a community of book lovers. With each work we discuss, we deepen our shared experience, learn more about each other and ourselves, and honor the heritage of women’s creativity across eras and cultures.

For more information about joining the book club, please contact Joyce Peterson at petersoj@fiu.edu.

The date for the November Women Faculty Book Club is Sunday, November 18, at 7 p.m. As usual, we gratefully accept the hospitality offered by Judith Stiehm and meet at her home (call Judith for admission to the building). Please see prior WomBook Mailing List email for details.

Find below a listing of the AY 2018-19 Women Faculty Book Club books, or browse our picks from previous years back to 1991. The past-year publications encompass our chosen record of women’s writing over more than 25 years. We hope you find it a useful guide to leisure reading.

Fall 2018 dates: November 18, December 9. Check back soon for more information!

Women Faculty Book Club bookmark, 3rd edition. Follow link "View or download..." for PDF version of full bookmark or follow the link "Past years" for past book listings.

View or download our bookmark with past books list

November 18
Our November book choice is Transcription by Kate Atkinson.Transcription tells the story of Juliet Armstrong, recruited as a young woman by British intelligence agency MI5 to transcribe recorded phone conversations of suspected fifth columnists during World War II. "There is in this novel, as in all of Ms. Atkinson's, a sense of absurd predicament expressed in wonderful comic set pieces filled with material detail and running jokes. Often enough they involve complacently held, patronizing assumptions about the role of women, assumptions that persist in even ludicrously extreme situations." Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, September 22, 2018, p. C10

Please make plans to joins us for our November meeting at the home of Judith Stiehm (see WomBook emails for details).
October 2018
October 21

Our reading selection for October is Florida by Lauren Groff. Florida is a collection of short stories about which reviewer Christine Schutt says "Lauren Groff is a great storyteller" whose stories are "full of event and surprise, instruction and comfort." Set mostly in our state of Florida, a state with the menace of "snakes, sinkholes, panthers, storms that strike windows with personal animus." How could we resist!
Summer to September 2018
An occasional column in the New York Times entitled “The Enthusiast” inspired our theme for summer reading. In "The Enthusiast" different writers offer their “enthusiasm” for a writer they consider underappreciated and who deserves a more extended readership. Some were long out-of-print and recently reissued as Virago or NYRB Classics. We have chosen 5, some from "The Enthusiast" and some we have added - all by 20th century British women.

Please read at least one from this list.