Next Chapter Society Book Club

Join Next Chapter Society Book Club on Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m. as we meet to discuss "Let Us Descend" by Jesmyn Ward. Visit the Nashville Public Library's online catalog at nashville.overdrive.com to get your copy!

"Let Us Descend" describes a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Annis leads readers through the descent, hers is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.
OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • Instant New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe, Time, The New Yorker and more.

What's on the menu: Menu here!
Alcohol: Yes! Love and Exile is a working winery and they have other beverages as well.
Parking: Street level parking, all along the front
Outside?: Maybe!!

Gather with some of Nashville's fellow book lovers and learn more about the Next Chapter Society, the Nashville Public Library Foundation's emerging leaders group. Even if you haven't read the book, you are still welcome to join us!

Join Next Chapter Society Book Club on Tuesday, March 25 at 6:30 p.m. as we meet to discuss "When Women Were Dragons" by Kelly Barnhill. Visit the Nashville Public Library's online catalog or reserve a physical copy for pickup at your local branch!

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

Named one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews, nominated for Best Fantasy in 2022 in the Goodreads Choice Awards and shortlisted in 2022 for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

Where are we meeting: Southern Grist in the Nations
What's on the menu: Menu here!
Alcohol: Beer menu here
Parking: Street level parking in the front with a lot in the back.

Gather with some of Nashville's fellow book lovers and learn more about the Next Chapter Society, the Nashville Public Library Foundation's emerging leaders group. Even if you haven't read the book, you are still welcome to join us!

Join Next Chapter Society Book Club on Tuesday, April 22 at 6:30 p.m. as we meet to discuss "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan. Check out the Nashville Public Library's online catalog or reserve a physical copy for pickup at your local branch!

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2011, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010 and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2010.

Where are we meeting: Tailgate Brewery HQ (West)
What's on the menu: Menu here
Alcohol: Beer menu here
Parking: Free paved and gravel street level parking in the front and side. Overflow parking down a hill.

Gather with some of Nashville's fellow book lovers and learn more about the Next Chapter Society, the Nashville Public Library Foundation's emerging leaders group. Even if you haven't read the book, you are still welcome to join us!