About the Wartburg College Book Club
One book is selected for discussion each month within the Wartburg community. All are invited – students, alumni, parents, donors – to join the conversation and learn from other Knights. This community is intended to be an inclusive environment. Topics and opinions discussed each month do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of Wartburg College.
Those who sign up for the bimonthly newsletter will receive book announcements, discussion questions, educational information, highlights from the Facebook group, invitation for virtual events, and more. The Facebook group will host the majority of content and interactions, with daily posts Monday through Friday.
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.
But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
Where to find this book
- Your local library
- Bookshop
- Raccoon River Press (owned by Jena Best ’13)
- IndieBound
Discussion Schedule
Week of Nov. 1: Prologue, Interruption, Chapters 1-5
Week of Nov. 8: Chapters 6-10
Week of Nov. 15: Chapters 11-16, Coda
Tuesday, Nov. 23, 7 p.m.: Zoom discussion
For most of us, the Arctic conjures up images of freezing and forsaken solitude. Hence, Austrian painter Christiane Ritter was at best ambivalent when her husband asked her to join him on the small Arctic island of Spitsbergen in a tarpaulin-covered hut sixty miles from the nearest neighbor. Yet his descriptions were filled not with cold and hardship but tales of remarkable wildlife, alluring light shows, and treks over water and ice. Won over, Ritter joined her husband and grew to love life on this small isle off Norway’s coast, and in this charming memoir she describes her experiences, with insight and wry humor. Whether or not you ever plan a trip to the Arctic, A Woman in the Polar Night offers thoughtful reflections on isolation and the place the natural world holds in the human psyche.
Discussion Schedule
Week of Nov. 29: Foreword-Chapter 5
Week of Dec. 6: Chapters 6-12
Week of Dec. 13: Chapters 13-18, pictures
Tuesday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m. CST: Virtual Book Discussion
Past Reads
- May 2020: “We Were the Lucky Ones” by Georgia Hunter
- June 2020: “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance
- July 2020: “The Sun Does Shine” by Anthony Ray Hinton
- August 2020: “A Woman Is No Man” by Etaf Rum
- September 2020: “Climate Justice” by Mary Robinson
- October 2020: “How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi
- November 2020: “The Family Upstairs” by Lisa Jewell
- December 2020: “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman
- January 2021: “IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives” by Chris Stedman
- February 2021: “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
- March 2021: “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller
- April 2021: “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
- May 2021: “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai
- June 2021: “The Kitchen God’s Wife” by Amy Tan
- July 2021: “The Northern Spy” by Flynn Berry
- August 2021: “Sharks in the Time of Saviors” by Kawai Strong Washburn
- September 2021: “The Book of Longings” by Sue Monk Kidd
- October 2021: “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton
- November 2021: “The City We Became” by N.K. Jemisin