Books & Brew 2025 Chillicothe Public Library's eclectic book club for adults meets at 6:30 pm on third Tuesdays. If you are a regular attendee or interested in attending, your feedback is appreciated as we start planning for next year. Please complete your response by December 1. Thank you! Question Title * 1. Help us choose our books for 2025! Please select your top 10 choices from the following. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin – Two childhood friends reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. They borrow, beg, and, before even graduating college, create their first blockbuster: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds they build, and the imperfect world they live in. Good Night, Irene, by Luis Alberto Urrea – In 1943, Irene abandons an abusive fiancé to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends with a fellow “Donut Dolly” with a ferocious wit, and falls in love with a fighter pilot. Her fervent and precarious hope is for all of them to survive the war intact. An affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, based on the service of the author’s own mother. Ready, Player One, by Ernest Cline – In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days. When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune and control of the OASIS itself. When Wade cracks the first clue, suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), by Katie Mack - We know the universe had a beginning. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now? With lively wit and humor, Dr. Mack takes us on a mind-bending tour through five of the cosmos’s possible finales. Guiding us through cutting-edge science and major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and more, this is a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of all that we know. All the Young Men, by Ruth Coker Burks – The true story of Ruth Coker Burks, a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis. As she forges deep friendships with the men she helps, she becomes a beacon of hope, working tirelessly to find them housing, jobs, food, education, and rare medications—even searching for funeral homes willing to take their bodies. This moving memoir honors her service and the beloved men who fought valiantly for their lives. (No audiobook available through library.) When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka – A Japanese American family is forced to move from their home in California to an incarceration camp in the Utah desert following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. After two years, they return to find that their old neighborhood is neither familiar nor hospitable. Otsuka tells their story from five points of view, conveying the emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. True Biz, by Sara Nović - This revelatory novel follows a year of seismic romantic, political, and familial shifts for a teacher and her students at a boarding school for the deaf: a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person; a golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and the hearing headmistress, a CODA (child of deaf adult(s)) who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact. West with the Night, by Beryl Markham – A memoir of a life full of adventure and beauty: when Beryl was a girl, she and her father moved from England to Kenya, where she grew up with a pet zebra and made money scouting elephants from a tiny plane. She would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, racehorse trainer, and aviatrix—and the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America. Dust Tracks on a Road, by Zora Neal Hurston - The bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature’s most compelling and influential authors. Hurston’s powerful novels of the South—most famously, Their Eyes Were Watching God—continue to enthrall readers with their lyrical grace, sharp detail, and captivating emotionality. Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer - As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer is trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she brings these two lenses of knowledge together Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley – A groundbreaking YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community. When family tragedy strikes, Daunis puts her college plans on hold to look after her mother. The only bright spot is the hockey team’s new recruit, who is charming, but hiding something. When Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she is thrust into an FBI investigation. As the deceptions—and deaths—keep growing, she must learn how far she’ll go for her community. The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal - In an alternate 1952, a huge meteorite obliterated much of the east coast of the US. As a result, the earth will soon be inhospitable for humanity, and the effort to colonize space is radically accelerated. Elma, a pilot and mathematician, works as a calculator supporting the International Aerospace Coalition’s attempts to put man on the moon. But her growing drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that she dares to challenge society’s most dearly held conventions. (No audiobook available through library.) The Bear, by Andrew Krivak – A post-apocalyptic fable about a father and daughter, the last two people on Earth who live off the land in the shadow of a mountain, and a bear who appears as a guide when loss and grief bury the beauty of the surroundings and the gifts that a solitary life can offer. You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limón (Poet Laureate of the United States) – Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this collection features 50 previously unpublished poems from some of the nation’s most accomplished poets. Each poem engages with its author’s local landscape—be it the breathtaking variety of flora in a national park, or a lone tree flowering persistently by a bus stop—offering an intimate model of how we relate to the world around us and a beautifully diverse range of voices from across the United States. (No audiobook available through library.) Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond – The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show us new ways of thinking about this morally urgent problem and help us imagine solutions. Blackfish City, by Sam J. Miller – An urban sci-fi novel by Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller, set in a dystopian future on a floating, technologically advanced city in the Arctic Circle plagued by crime and corruption, which spawns unrest and motivates four of its inhabitants to resist the forces of destruction when a strange visitor appears on the back of an orca. Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice, by Cristina Rivera Garza – In this genre-defying, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, the author documents her sister’s life, striving to make sense of her murder by an ex-boyfriend 29 years ago, find justice, and examine how that tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today. Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil – an illustrated, lyrical memoir told in short essays by a Mississippi-based poet and essayist, about 40 different kinds of food that evoke her memories of childhood, friendships, travel, family, and connections to nature and the cultures of the Philippines and India, where her parents are from. Survival of the Thickest: Essays, by Michelle Buteau –Buteau’s humorous essays reflect on growing up Caribbean, Catholic, and thick in New Jersey, going to college in Miami (where everyone smells like pineapple), her many friendship and dating disasters, working as a newsroom editor during 9/11, getting started in stand-up opening for male strippers, marrying into her husband’s Dutch family, IVF and surrogacy, motherhood, chosen family, and what it feels like to have a full heart, tight jeans, and stardom finally in her grasp. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride - In 1972, workers in Pottstown, PA, discover a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there are two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. In this novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community that sustain us. A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future, by Benjamin Vogt – Examining why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities—Vogt suggests that by thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another. (Available through the library only as a Hoopla eBook.) Question Title * 2. A little bit about you... I regularly attend Books & Brew. I plan to attend Books & Brew in 2025. I would like to attend, but the day/time doesn't work for me. I would like to attend, but I prefer to meet in a setting other than the library. Other (please specify your interest in a library book club) Question Title * 3. What would be your ideal time and day to attend a book club? Question Title * 4. What would be your ideal book club meeting location? Question Title * 5. What kind of books are you interested in reading and discussing in a book club? (Check all that apply.) Young Adult/Teen books Thrillers Science Fiction Mysteries Funny books Historical fiction Long books Fantasy Short books Short Stories "Classics" Poetry Non-fiction (true stories) Fiction Romance Children's books Other (please specify) Done