One Village, One Book

We had so much fun reading books set in Oakland in 2023 that we’ve decided to keep it going in 2024! This year’s we’ve expanded to books set in the Bay Area, although we still have a strong Oakland focus. Our books are selected from a variety of genres and eras so you’re sure to find something you’re interested in. We’ll get to learn more about our city, meet some neighbors and discuss what we’ve read.

Meetings are the second Tuesday of the month from 6:30-7:30pm. Come to one discussion, a few or all of them! No pre-registration or commitment is required – all we ask is that you’ve read the book and are ready to discuss it.

Here’s our 2024 schedule:

Just for fun, this year we’re reading our way chronologically through the books in the order they’re set, from pre-history to right now.

• January 9, 2024: Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City by Andrew Alden
  Starts with rocks as old as the Earth: In this nonfiction book, “geologist Andrew Alden excavates the ancient story of Oakland’s geologic underbelly and reveals how its silt, soil, and subterranean sinews are intimately entwined with its human history–and future.”
• February 13, 2024: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
  Set in 1849: This “sprawling, engrossing historical novel” follows Eliza Sommers on her journey from Chile to Gold-Rush-era San Francisco and Northern California in search of the father of her child.
• March 12, 2024: The Golden Gate by Amy Chua
  Set in 1944: “When presidential hopeful Walter Wilkinson is murdered in Berkeley’s iconic Claremont hotel, Detective Al Sullivan is drawn into a tangle of volatile politics, deceptive femme fatales, and destructive family secrets.” (Booklist)
• April 9, 2024: On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
  Set in 1953: This reimagining of The Fiddler on the Roof by an Oakland-based author follows three sisters in a jazz trio as they struggle to be independent from their mother’s dreams for them, set against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying Fillmore District. (Also available as an ebook.)
• May 14, 2024: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Melinda Lo
  Set in 1954: This YA novel set in San Francisco’s Chinatown follows 17-year-old Lily Hu as she tries to figure out where she fits in, falls in love, and deals the expectations of her traditional parents and community. It’s “the intersectional, lesbian, historical teen novel so many readers have been waiting for.” (Kirkus)
• June 11, 2024: Fire in the Hills edited by Patricia Adler
  Set in 1991: Subtitled “A Collective Remembrance,” this nonfiction book tells the story of the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire from the perspectives of different people who lived through it.
• July 9, 2024: Water Signs by Janet Dawson
  Set in the 2000s: This mystery novel is set in a gentrifying Oakland with a cast of shady real estate developers and questionable politicians that could have been pulled from just about any era of Oakand’s waterfront history. PI Jeri Howard investigates the death of a security guard at a construction site on the Embarcadero whose body washes up in the Estuary.
• August 13, 2024: Masha’allah and Other Stories by Mariah K. Young
  Set around 2012: Beautifully-written short stories set in the East Bay, featuring a diverse cast of characters who live and work on the edges of Bay Area prosperity, like day laborers, house cleaners, hairdressers, bartenders, and limo drivers.
• September 10, 2024: Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
  Set in 2015-2016: Go back to school with this graphic novel following Bishop O’Dowd’s basketball team on its quest to win a state championship. (Also available as an ebook.)
• October 8, 2024: Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
  Set around 2016: The lives of two women – one an Indian American chef who’s struggling to conceive and one an undocumented Mexican immigrant working to start a new life in California with her baby – intersect as they reckon with “pregnancy, childbirth, and the meaning of family in Berkeley, California.”
• November 12, 2024: Chimerica by Anita Felicelli
  Set around 2019: In this magical realism novel reviewers have compared to Helen Oyeyemi, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami, “down-and-out Tamil American trial lawyer Maya Ramesh fights to save a painted [and talking] lemur come to life, in settings that range from Oakland, California to a Malagasy rain forest.” This satiric novel “looks at the inherent absurdities that drive systems of culture, power, and law…and the ways in which art is codified and commodified.”
• December 10, 2024: Shut Up, This is Serious by Carolina Ixta
  Set now: This YA novel is so new (due to be published in January 2024) that it’s not in OPL yet, but we’ll update the link when it’s available. The story follows two Latina teens growing up in East Oakland as they navigate love, family, racism, school, an unexpected pregnancy, and more.