The Literary Wineaux Society OC

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb - From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world--where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Amazon Link.

Additional Reading and Viewing
Article - New York Times: A Psychotherapist Analyzes Her Patient's Stories...And Her Own
Article - The Gottman Institute: An Interview with the Author
Listen: NPR - A Psychotherapist Goes To Therapy and Gets a Taste of Her Own Medicine
Watch: Tara Westover (author of 'Educated') Interviews Lori Gottlieb about 'Maybe I Should Talk To Someone'

Location: Five Vines Wine, San Juan Capistrano
Due to the limited capacity of this venue, please check and update your RSVP ahead of time if you can not attend. Per new 2025 rules: if you are a no-show, you will kindly be removed from the group.

Can't Make It? Waitlisted? Want To Attend Another Night?
Due to the close votes Viola Davis' memoir 'Finding Me' received, we will meet the following night - Thursday, January 23 to discuss this book. Please check the event listing and RSVP. Just 10 people max! Feel free to attend both nights, but update your RSVP if you decide not to attend this one to make room for waitlisted wineauxs.

Shop the Literary Wineaux Society's online pop-up bookshops...
Amazon Storefront
Bookshop.Org Storefront

NOTE: This is a duplicate of the book club on the same day at 6:30pm to facilitate new people who want to join and those on the waitlist and those that can make it at an earlier time. This book club will be no longer than 1.5 hours. It's also happy hour from 5-6pm.

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb - From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world--where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she). With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Amazon Link.

Additional Reading and Viewing
Article - New York Times: A Psychotherapist Analyzes Her Patient's Stories...And Her Own
Article - The Gottman Institute: An Interview with the Author
Listen: NPR - A Psychotherapist Goes To Therapy and Gets a Taste of Her Own Medicine
Watch: Tara Westover (author of 'Educated') Interviews Lori Gottlieb about 'Maybe I Should Talk To Someone'

Location: Five Vines Wine, San Juan Capistrano
Due to the limited capacity of this venue, please check and update your RSVP ahead of time if you can not attend. Per new 2025 rules: if you are a no-show, you will kindly be removed from the group.
You are RSVP'ing for GROUP B which starts at 6:30pm - There is another event listing for 5pm so please RSVP on that event's page if you can make the earlier time.

Can't Make It? Waitlisted? Want To Attend Another Night?
Due to the close votes Viola Davis' memoir 'Finding Me' received, we will meet the following night - Thursday, January 23 to discuss this book. Please check the event listing and RSVP. Just 10 people max! Feel free to attend both nights, but update your RSVP if you decide not to attend this one to make room for waitlisted wineauxs.

Shop the Literary Wineaux Society's online pop-up bookshops...
Amazon Storefront
Bookshop.Org Storefront

Finding Me by Viola Davis - "This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you" Amazon Link.

Additional Reading and Viewing:
Watch: Oprah in Conversation with Viola Davis
Listen: Brene Brown Interviews Viola Davis

Location: Salt Creek Wine Bar, Laguna Niguel
A local wine shop with wine tasting and wines by the glass that change weekly. I have reserved a long table for us and the owner said it's very quiet on a Thursday night - so let's hope!! :)

Please update your RSVP ahead of time if you can not make it. Per new 2025 rules, any no-shows will be removed from the group. Thank you in advance for your courtesy.

1. 'The Great Believers' by Rebecca Mekkai - A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, this novel tells the story of Yale Tishman, a man living in Chicago during the 1980s AIDS epidemic, as he witnesses the devastation of the crisis within his close gay community, while simultaneously following the narrative of Fiona Marcus, Yale's friend's younger sister, who is now searching for her estranged daughter in Paris years later, grappling with the lasting impact the AIDS epidemic had on her life and her family; both storylines intertwine as they explore themes of loss, grief, and resilience in the face of tragedy. Currently in development as a series by Amy Poehler. Amazon Link

2 'The Shards' by Bret Easton Ellis - From the author of 'Less Than Zero' and 'American Psycho' comes a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city. Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends. Soon to be a TV series on HBO. Amazon Link

3. 'Sigh, Gone' by Phuc Tran - In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where they struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir, told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Amazon Link

4. 'All The Colors of the Dark' by Chris Whittaker - 1975 is a time of change in America and in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another. A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each. A novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession and the blinding light of hope. Amazon Link

5. 'Long Island' by Colm Tolbin - The story takes place in 1976 in Long Island, 20 years after the events of 'Brooklyn'. Eilis' life is upended when a stranger tells her that her husband Tony has had an affair and that the baby will be left on her doorstep. Eilis returns to Ireland to reconnect with her family and friends, and to decide what to do about the situation. The novel explores themes of unfulfilled longings, the need to control those close to us, and how we are blind to our own motivations. Amazon Link.

6. 'A Gorgeous Excitement' by Cynthia Weiner - A debut novel set in 1980s New York when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman's summer of infinite possibility -- and looming danger. Freud called cocaine “a gorgeous excitement. It was the summer of 1986, when a girl was found dead in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum. Flanagan’s is a local bar where Nina pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she’s introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. Amazon Link.

7. 'The Berlin Letters' by Katherine Reay - A historical fiction novel that follows the story of Luisa Voekler, a CIA cryptographer who discovers a cache of coded letters revealing her presumed-dead father is alive and imprisoned in East Germany, leading her to journey to Berlin during the Cold War to attempt to free him, navigating the complexities of the Berlin Wall and the secrets of her family's past while piecing together the truth through the letters he sent; the narrative alternates between Luisa's perspective and her father's experiences in East Berlin, highlighting the personal struggle against the backdrop of political turmoil and division.Amazon Link

P.S. Your presence at book club is my present! So please honor your RSVP and kindly update it if you can't attend!