After a long break, we’re starting 2024 with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous 1841 essay “Circles.”

This month, we’re discussing Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” and Anne Fadiman’s “Frog.”

We’ll be discussing Shayla Love’s piece for Nautilus that was published back in December. The article is about a new therapy that promises to alleviate the pain of traumatic memories like a breakup or other heartbreak. Sounding a little like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Let’s talk it out at “Book” Club.

For this last “Book” Club of the year, we’ll be discussing Sara Spitz’s article for Vice, “The Tamagotchi Breeder on Her 65th Generation of the Digital Pet.” We’ll cover topics like the difference between passion and obsession, what digital pets teach us about needs, and whether we should be making our technology so lifelike.

For this first “Book” Club of the new year, we’ll be discussing Meehan Crist’s article that examines the question, “Is it OK to have kids?” What are the arguments for and against? Do babies impact our planet’s changing climate all that much? What even are our choices?

July is an animal-themed “Book” Club. We’ll be reading two articles about elephants and monkeys that tell us a lot about what it means to be human.

This month, we’re discussing the evolution of the Dawson crying GIF.

At Facebook, rules around who gets banned from using the platform changed based on Mark Zuckerberg’s whims.

This month, we’ll be discussing wtf is up with J.K. Rowling, and her journey from being the world’s most beloved to the world’s most reviled children’s book author. Will we be talking a bunch about J.K.’s Twitter account? You betcha!

At our last meeting, we talked a bit about how the lack of a local news outlet in Stockton, CA, might have lead to the rise of an alternative news platform, which played a part in Michael Tubbs losing his mayoral re-election bit. In that discussion, we briefly touched on the impact paywalls are likely having on people’s access to quality news and information. So this week we’re going to read Nathan J. Robinson’s take on the subject, published in the August 2020 issue of Current Affairs.

We’re kicking off 2021 with a profile in Politico of Michael Tubbs, the 30-year-old Mayor of Stockton, CA, who just lost his bid for a second term. Is Tubbs still a rising star? And what went wrong? We’re about to find out.

Our last article of the year will be Heather Havrilesky’s response—through her ‘Ask Polly’ advice column—to a letter sent in from Aspiring Human Who Would Like to Live Like an Artist.

Polly’s reply offers very insightful advice on how to think about what it means to be an artist, as well as rules to live by if you want your life to mirror an artist’s.

We’ll be discussing an article published in AFAR about Ireland’s pioneer female aviator, Lilian Bland. Bland was the first woman to design, build, and fly her own plane. She also published a booklet about how to ride a horse.

We'll be discussing the New Yorker article 'How A Cheese Goes Extinct' from August 2020, written by GBBO finalist and food writer Ruby Tandoh. And since we're still in quarantine times, this event will happen over Zoom.

We'll be discussing the LA Times article 'Who is Anna March?' from July 2018, written by Melissa Chadburn and Carolyn Kellogg. And since we're still in quarantine times, this event will be held over Zoom.

We’ll be discussing this 1984 James Baldwin interview with Richard Goldstein in The Village Voice about the future of gay life in America.

This month, we’ll dive into the Longreads Queens of Infamy series, starting with this amazing piece about Queen Njinga that reads like a piece of incredible folklore.

We'll be reading 'Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection' by Kiera Feldman. Published in 2018, Feldman goes inside the world of the private trash collection that happens on the streets of New York when the sun goes down.

This is a social distancing-safe event. All participants will remain in their homes.

A month into quarantine, it felt like a good idea to discuss an article about taking long walks through NYC.

After the success of our first online article "book" club, we've decided to do this every month.

For March, we'll be discussing a popular 2019 Longread: Shannon Stirone's 'The Hunt for Planet Nine.'

As always, there will be food, drinks, and good conversation.

For the first meeting of the Online Article "Book" Club, we'll be discussing Elif Batuman's wildly popular New Yorker article from 2018 about Japan's rent-a-family services.

Link to article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry