Book Discussion Group
Read. Discuss. Connect.
Join the Bucks County Community College Book Discussion Group, founded in 1988. The group meets online from 7:30 to 9 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month.
You will read and discuss a variety of books, including fiction, nonfiction, classics and recent releases. Group members choose the reading list twice a year, usually in June and December.
Language and Literature Professor Emeritus Michael Hennessey leads each discussion.
Who Can Join
Meetings are free and open to the public. You can join from anywhere with an internet connection using Microsoft Teams.
How to Register
Space is limited each month. To join a discussion, email Professor Hennessey at least one week before the meeting.
Upcoming Selections
August 13 – Playground by Richard Powers (2024, 416 pp.)
Four lives intersect on the French Polynesian island of Makatea in Richard Powers’ Booker Prize-longlisted novel Playground. Evie Beaulieu is a pioneering diver captivated by the ocean. Ina Aroita is an artist who grew up on Pacific naval bases. At an elite Chicago high school, two opposite personalities form a deep bond: Rafi Young loses himself in the world of literature, while Todd Keane develops a groundbreaking artificial intelligence breakthrough. Their paths converge on a tiny atoll which is the staging ground for humanity’s next major frontier: a controversial project to launch autonomous, floating cities into the open ocean.
September 10 – Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (2015, 336 pp.)
One of the most revered voices in literature today gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. One of the best books of the year (2014), NY Times book review.
October 8 – North Water by Ian McGuire (2016, 272 pp.)
A 19th-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp and highly original tale that grips like a thriller. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaling ship that is due to set sail for the rich hunting waters of the Arctic Circle. Also aboard is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money and no better option than to embark as ship's medic on this violent, filthy, ill-fated voyage. As the true purposes of the expedition become clear, the confrontation between the two men plays out in the freezing darkness of an arctic winter.
November 12 – Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation by Cokie Roberts (2005, 384 pp.)
While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often-surprising stories of these fascinating women in the American Revolution, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Deborah Read Franklin and Martha Washington — proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might have never survived.
December 10 – The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (2023, 400 pp.)
In 1972, workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, discovered 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. 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.
January 14 – Land: A Novel by Maggie O'Farrell (2026, 400 pp.)
The award-winning, bestselling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait returns with a soaring historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger. On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster. The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again.