Monday Books
Monday Books is open to the entire Waynflete adult community. Enjoy discussions led by Waynflete faculty and staff on books they have chosen.
We will begin our meetings online (with the hope of moving towards in person gatherings if possible as the year progresses). Check the Veracross calendar or The Weekly for the Zoom link.
Monday Books titles may be purchased online or in-store at Print: A Bookstore or are available to borrow from Thaxter Library. Please stop by Thaxter Library in the Emery Building or contact Emily Graham () to arrange a curbside pickup.
2021-2022 Book Selections
Monday, October 4, 2021
All We Can Save — Ayana Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson
Discussion Leader: Kim Simmons, P’22
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States—scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race—and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Monday, November 8, 2021
Freshwater — Akwaeke Emezi
Discussion Leader: Laura Lennig, Grades 6-12 English Faculty
Freshwater tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who is a source of deep concern to her southern Nigerian family. Young Ada is troubled, prone to violent fits. Born “with one foot on the other side,” she begins to develop separate selves within her as she grows into adulthood. And when she travels to America for college, a traumatic event on campus crystallizes the selves into something powerful and potentially dangerous, making Ada fade into the background of her own mind as these alters–now protective, now hedonistic–move into control. Based in the author’s realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and grace.
Monday, December 13, 2021
Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
Discussion Leader: Asra Ahmed, Upper School Director
Here is 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. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Monday, February 7, 2022
My Ántonia — Willa Cather
Discussion Leader: Juanita Nichols, Director of Alumni Relations and Kelsey Robinov, Director of Development
Willa Cather’s heartfelt novel is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman’s life on the hardscrabble Nebraska plains. Through Jim Burden’s affectionate reminiscence of his childhood friend, the free-spirited Ántonia Shimerda, a larger, uniquely American portrait emerges, both of a community struggling with unforgiving terrain and of a woman who, amid great hardship, stands as a timeless inspiration.
Monday, March 7, 2022
Water by the Spoonful — Quiara Alegría Hudes
Discussion Leader: Tiki Fuhro, Grades 6-12 Performing Arts Faculty
Somewhere in Philadelphia, Elliot has returned from Iraq and is struggling to find his place in the world. Somewhere in a chat room, recovering addicts forge an unbreakable bond of support and love. The boundaries of family and community are stretched across continents and cyberspace as birth families splinter and online families collide. Water by the Spoonful is a heartfelt and poetic meditation on lives on the brink of redemption and self-discovery during a time of heightened uncertainty.
Monday, April 4, 2022
The Carrying — Ada Limón
Discussion Leader: Jim Millard, Grades 6-12 English Faculty
Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility–“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”–and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still Limon shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives.
