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Sip wine, discuss literature. I can’t think of a better way to get to know your neighbors. Open to everyone! Join our facebook group and get updates on this and future book club events.

February 18th, 2012 at 7pm- “Too Loud A Solitude” by Bohumil Hrabal & “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury (Optional) due to political censorship, it was Hrabal’s final novel before his death. It tells the story of an eclectic and dimwitted old man who works as a paper crusher in Prague, using his job to save and amass astounding numbers of rare and banned books. Hrabal, whom Milan Kundera calls “our very best writer today,” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word. Translated by Michael Henry Heim.

March 18th, 2012 at 7pm- “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. (Devil in the White City)A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance–and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming–yet wholly sinister–Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

“Larson is a marvelous writer…superb at creating characters with a few short strokes.”—New York Times Book Review