What we’re about
Meet kindred book lovers in a local Meetup Book Club! Fiction or non-fiction, paperback or hardcover, you'll read a new book (or two!) every month. Come to laugh, share stories and make new friends!
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- November 2024 — Priestdaddy, by Patricia LockwoodTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CAUSD 10.00
📖 Why this book? 📖
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NAMED ONE OF THE 50 BEST MEMOIRS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
SELECTED AS A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: The Washington Post * Elle * NPR * New York Magazine * Boston Globe * Nylon *
Slate * The Cut * The New Yorker * Chicago TribuneWINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR
"Affectionate and very funny... wonderfully grounded and authentic. This book proves Lockwood to be a formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleases." - The New York Times Book Review
[November to remember: it happens to be that we have read memoirs the last two Novembers, so here’s to a third. —Rebecca]
Published May 1, 2017
Hard to find a book? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library.
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes and then start discussing the book promptly at 7pm.
👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$10 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $10 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $10, so please message me if you have any concerns
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
From Booker Prize finalist Patricia Lockwood, author of the novel No One Is Talking About This, a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition.
Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any
Catholic priest you have ever met — a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972." His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.In Priestdaddy, Lockwood interweaves emblematic moments from her childhood and adolescence — from an ill-fated family hunting trip and an abortion clinic sit-in where her father was arrested to her involvement in a cultlike Catholic youth group — with scenes that chronicle the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents' household after a decade of living on their own. Lockwood details her education of a seminarian who is also living at the rectory, tries to explain Catholicism to her husband, who is mystified by its bloodthirstiness and arcane laws, and encounters a mysterious substance on a hotel bed with her mother.
Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.
- December 2024 — The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBrideTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CAUSD 10.00
📖 Why this book? 📖
THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
FROM ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE OF 2024
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR/FRESH AIR, WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, AND TIME MAGAZINE
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023"A murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel... Charming, smart, heart-blistering, and heart-healing." — Danez Smith, The New York Times Book Review
"We all need — we all deserve — this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Published August 7, 2023
Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes and then start discussing the book promptly at 7pm.
👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$10 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $10 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $10, so please message me if you have any concerns
(Heads up: Time-Tested Books can run a bit warm after hot downtown days like these. 😅)
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah's Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Penn-sylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were 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.
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his
theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.As these characters' stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town's white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community — heaven and earth — that sustain us.
Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.
- January 2025 — My Murder, by Katie WilliamsTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CAUSD 10.00
📖 Why this book? 📖
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND GLAMOUR!"One of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads... Going to keep readers turning pages late into the night." -The New York Times
"Ingenious... fresh and unpredictable." -The Washington Post
"Gleefully overturn[s] the age-old 'woman-in-trouble' plot...eerie and inventive." - NPR's Fresh Air
Published June 6, 2023
Hard to find a book? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library.
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes and then start discussing the book promptly at 7pm.
👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$10 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. To cover the store's overhead, there is a $7 donation per person. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
What if the murder you had to solve was your own?
Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.
Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed - she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly
comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller. - February 2025 — A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom StandageTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CAUSD 10.00
📖 Why this book? 📖
New York Times Bestseller * The inspiration for the TV series starring Dan Aykroyd
"There aren't many books this entertaining that also provide a cogent crash course in ancient, classical and modern history." - Los Angeles Times
Release 25 May 2009
Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes and then start discussing the book promptly at 7pm.
👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$10 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $10 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $10, so please message me if you have any concerns
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
Beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola: In Tom Standage's deft, innovative account of world history, these six beverages turn out to be much more than just ways to quench thirst. They also represent six eras that span the course of civilization—from the adoption of agriculture, to the birth of cities, to the advent of globalization.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century through each epoch's signature refreshment. As Standage persuasively argues, each drink is in fact a kind of technology, advancing culture and catalyzing the intricate interplay of different societies. After reading this enlightening book, you may never look at your favorite drink in quite the same way again.