Alumni & Friends Virtual Book Club

“I Talk About it All the Time: A Memoir” by Camara Lundestad Joof, translated by Olivia Gunn

Tuesdays, September 9, 16 
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time
OR
Thursdays, September 11, 18 
7-8:30 p.m. Central Time

The book club’s first book for the 2025-2026 year is the Paideia summer read, “I Talk About It All the Time.” The book is an unflinching and lyrical exploration of what it is to belong, by Norwegian Gambian performance artist, playwright, and author Camara Lundestad Joof.

From Goodreads: In this biting, lyrical memoir, Camara Lundestad Joof, born in Bodø to Norwegian and Gambian parents, shares her experiences as a queer Black Norwegian woman. Joof’s daily encounters belie the myth of a colorblind contemporary Scandinavia. She wrestles with the fickle palimpsest of memory, demanding communion with her readers even as she recognizes her own exhaustion in the face of constantly being asked to educate others. “I regularly decide to quit talking to white people about racism,” writes Joof. Such discussions often feel unproductive, the occasional spark of hope coming at enormous personal cost. But not talking about it is impossible, a betrayal of self. The book is a self-examination as well as societal indictment. It is an open challenge to readers, to hear her as she talks about it, all the time. It will be discussed over two sessions, with an option to watch the livestream of the author addressing the Luther community during Convocation on September 4 at 9:40.

“The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder” by David Grann

Tuesdays, October 7, 14, 21 
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time

Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers’ Favorite History & Biography (2023)
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death–for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.

“This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger

Tuesdays, November 4, 11, 18
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time

Goodreads Choice Award. Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction (2019)

In the summer of 1932 during the great depression on the banks of Minnesota’s Gilead River, the Lincoln Indian Training Schools, a pitiless place where Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also the home to Odie O’Brian, a lively orphan boy whose exploits constantly earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Odie and his brother Albert are the only white faces among hundreds of Native American children at the school . The story follows the children, Odie, Albert, Mose (a mute young man of Sioux heritage), and brokenhearted Emmy who they take with them out of pity as they flee the school in a canoe after a tragic incident involving the school’s groundskeeper. Their journey takes them through the Midwest, encountering various individuals and families struggling to survive during the economic hardship. On their journey they cross paths with displaced families, struggling farmers and traveling faith healers and lost souls of all kinds.

“This Tender Land” is an enthralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and
makes us whole.

“Candide” by Voltaire

Tuesdays, January 6, 13, 20, 27
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time

From Good Reads: Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in “the best of all possible worlds.” On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust at the philosophical optimism that proclaims that all disaster and human suffering is part of a benevolent cosmic plan. Fast, funny, often outrageous, the French philosopher’s immortal narrative takes Candide around the world to discover that—contrary to the teachings of his distinguished tutor Dr. Pangloss—all is not always for the best. Alive with wit, brilliance, and graceful storytelling, Candide has become Voltaire’s most celebrated work.

“Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein” by Amy Weldon

Tuesdays February 10, 24; March 10 
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time

This book was written by Luther English Professor, Amy Weldon.

In 1816, a nineteen-year-old single mother wrote a book that transformed our vision of birth, bodies, and who we call “monsters.” Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein is her story. From her first spark of inspiration to widowhood at age 24, through the deaths of four of her five children and her struggles to build a writing career, Creature braids Mary Shelley’s little-known life journey with that of her most famous character: Victor Frankenstein’s half-human Creature, who shadows her in alternating chapters as conscience, criminal, and friend. Traveling from London to Italy and into our own technological future, Creature blends historical realism and literary magic to show how a bookish, haunted girl learns to confront her monsters by bringing them to life.

“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride

Tuesdays April 14, 21, 28; May 5
5-6:30 p.m. Central Time

Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a novel by James McBride. “This novel tells the story of Black and Jewish residents of the Chicken Hill neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1920s and ’30s.” The novel begins with the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of a well when foundations are being dug for a new development, in 1972. This is the story of how the Chicken Hill community comes together to protect a deaf child, whom the authorities want to institutionalize. McBride writes with insight, humor, compassion and a deep understanding of “mixed” communities.

James McBride brings a clear personal perspective to this novel*. McBride’s mother was born in Poland, the daughter of an itinerant rabbi and disabled mother. The family immigrated to the United States and lived in the south. As a teenager, McBride’s mother moved to Harlem where she met and married a black minister, raising 12 children.

*In 2006, James McBride wrote his memoir: Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

As the Twig Is Bent: A Memoir by Wallace B. Grange

China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston

Circe by Madeline Miller

Demon Copperfield by Barbara Kingsolver

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Growing Up Decorah: A Short Story by Peter Ylvisaker

Heritage of Darkness by Kathleen Ernst

How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

James by Percival Everett

No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Norwegian By Night by Derek B. Miller

The Overstory: a Novel by Richard Powers

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Purple Hibiscus: A Novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel by Nickolas Butler

State of Wonder: A Novel by Ann Patchett

Thank you to the Virtual Book Club Committee Suzanne (Knoll) Hales ’65, Jackie (Boe) Karras ’76, Alan Lerstrom, Michele Minske ’84, John Reha ’77, Ellen (Hanusa) Wilke ’84, and Steve Wilke ’84 for helping to revive, plan, and host this popular activity.