What makes a great book? 

A great book is more than just a well-written story. A great book is a treasure trove of humanity so that no matter how often you open a page and start reading, there is still something new to be discovered. 

JVSO Book Club is open to all members. We meet once a month on the last Wednesday of each month. All members are welcome to join in on any book club discussion whether you have read the book or not.

If you have a favorite book you think the group would like, please share it with us. All books are voted on during our meetings.

The book club meets the last Wednesday of the month at 3 p.m. at Jersey Meadows Golf Course.  All JVSO members are welcome, whether you have read the book or not. 

Looking for an interesting book to read?  The JVSO book club rates the books they read each month.  The highest-rated book in 2021 was the nonfiction book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou.  It was rated 4.6 out of 5 and chronicles the story of the silicon valley startup, Theranos, and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, who recently was found guilty of 4 counts of wire fraud.  The second highest-rated book was The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton, rated 4.1 out of 5.  

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November 30, 2022 - Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird Set during the Great Depression, Sarah Bird's Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a novel about one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes. July 3. 1932. Shivering and in shock, Evie Grace Devlin watches the Starlite Palace burn into the sea and wonders how she became a person who would cause a man to kill himself. She’d come to Galveston to escape a dark past in vaudeville and become a good person, a nurse. When that dream is cruelly thwarted, Evie is swept into the alien world of dance marathons. All that she has been denied—a family, a purpose, even love—waits for her there in the place she dreads most: the spotlight. Last Dance on the Starlight Pier is a sweeping novel that brings to spectacular life the enthralling worlds of both dance marathons and the family-run empire of vice that was Galveston in the Thirties. Unforgettable characters tell a story that is still deeply resonant today as America learns what Evie learns, that there truly isn’t anything this country can’t do when we do it together. That indomitable spirit powers a story that is a testament to the deep well of resilience in us all that allows us to not only survive the hardest of hard times, but to find joy, friends, and even family, in them.

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2022 JVSO Reads:

• January - The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin
• February - Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier
• March - Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
• April - Share a book
• May - The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• June - Down Range by Taylor Moore
• July - Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
• August - Share a book
• September - The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth                                                                                                Fountains of Silence by Ruta Septetys
• October - The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
• November - Last Dance on the Starlight Pier by Sarah Bird
• December - Share a book

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2021 JVSO Reads:

• January - Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
• February - The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
• March - Read a biography, autobiography or memoir and share with the group
• April - Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield
• May - Read any book you want and share with the group
• June - Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand
• July: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
• August - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• September - Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
• October - The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
• November - Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Gulf Coast Reads Selection)
• December - Bring your favorite book you have read this year and share with the group

Recomendations: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Coker / Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria / Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera / The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett / Comfort and Joy by Kristin Hannah / The Selective Poems of Langston Hughes / Middlemarch by George Eliott / Library Wars by Kiiro Yumi / Loving Frank by Nancy Horan / Final Girls by Riley Sager / Before and After by Lisa Wingate and Judy Christie / The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett /  If The Devil Had a Wife by Frank Mills

2019 JVSO Reads:

• January - Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• February - Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton
• March - Hondo by Louis Lamour
• April - Read any self-help book and share with the group
• May - The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
• June - A Woman of Independent Means by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
• July - The Dead Queens Club by Hannah Capin
• August - In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
• September - The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• October - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• November - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• December - Bring your favorite book you have read this year and share with the group

2018 JVSO Reads:

• February - Tumbling Turner Sisters by Juliette Fay
• March - The Dry by Jane Harper
• April - Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• May - Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• June - All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
• July - Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple
• August - The Book of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall
• September - All the Ever Afters by Danielle Teller
• October - Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke
• November - Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman
• ​December - Bring your favorite poetry to share with the group.

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