On the Same Page is a collaborative book club hosted by the Wood Theater and Black Walnut Books. We meet at 6:30pm on the first Wednesday of each month at the Charles R. Wood Theater Cabaret Space (207 Glen Street). Each month’s book is 10% off for members of the book club or you may choose to forego the discount and make a donation to the Wood Theater and its mission! Just choose either donation or discount when adding books to your cart.
Participation in On the Same Page is completely free and all are welcome! Sign-ups are encouraged to allow us to plan for meeting sizes and send reminders but are not required! Feel free to drop in!
April Pick: What My Bones Know
Wednesday April 16th at 6:30PM
Wood Theater Cabaret Space [207 Glen Street]
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD–a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years. Both of Foo’s parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she’d moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD. In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma–but you can learn to move with it.
May Pick: A Gentleman’s Gentleman
Wednesday May 21st at 6:30PM
Wood Theater Cabaret Space [207 Glen Street]
The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make” and even more unusual habits: he wears pastels year round, prefers to live as far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton as possible, and wholeheartedly prefers the comfortable company of his childhood cook and aged butler, Plinkton, to any swarm of servants that would normally befit a man of his station. His penchant for privacy makes for a pleasant, if occasionally lonely life-one that threatens to be upended entirely when Christopher receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father’s will, he must find a wife in London by the end of the Season if he intends to maintain his status as the only living heir to the Eden’s End estate. While most men his age and status would leap at the chance to marry, he cannot imagine a worse fate. After all, as a “man of unusual make” who also doesn’t happen to be attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are about on par with his future wife’s chances of staying silent about their arrangement. Enter the handsome-if stoic-James Harding, the new valet Christopher very reluctantly hires after Cook and Plinkton remind him that if he’s to stay in London, he must keep up appearances befitting that of a wealthy, eligible bachelor. After a rocky start to their relationship (wherein Harding simply does not understand why Christopher won’t let him dress him, wait on him, or fulfill any other typical valet duties, for that matter), the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season-a friendship that threatens to shatter completely as Christopher’s deadline to find a wife looms, and Harding reveals that he’s been harboring a rather consequential secret of his own. With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and subtle commentary on the complexity of trans identity and relationships that’s as relevant now as it was during the Regency era, Eden’s End stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.
June Pick: Be A Revolution
Wednesday June 18th at 6:30PM
Little Black Walnut Books [The Shirt Factory]
In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society. In Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, she discussed the ways in which white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But now that we better understand these systems of oppression, the question is this: What can we do about them?
With Be A Revolution: How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World–and How You Can, Too, Oluo aims to show how people across America are working to create real positive change in our structures. Looking at many of our most powerful systems–like education, media, labor, health, housing, policing, and more–she highlights what people are doing to create change for intersectional racial equity. She also illustrates various ways in which the reader can find entryways into change in these same areas, or can bring some of this important work being done elsewhere to where they live.
This book aims to not only be educational, but to inspire action and change. Oluo wishes to take our conversations on race and racism out of a place of pure pain and trauma, and into a place of loving action. Be A Revolution is both an urgent chronicle of this important moment in history, as well as an inspiring and restorative call for action.
July Pick: Big Swiss
Wednesday July 16th at 6:30PM
Wood Theater Cabaret Space [207 Glen St]
Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. Greta is fascinated by Big Swiss’s refreshing attitude toward trauma. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice at the dog park. In a panic, she introduces herself with a fake name and they quickly become enmeshed. Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship.
August Pick: The River Has Roots
Wednesday August 20th at 6:30PM
Wood Theater Cabaret Space [207 Glen St]
The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
The hardcover edition features beautiful interior illustrations and a foil case stamp.
“Half delicious murder ballad, half beguiling love story.” –Holly Black – ” An absolute must-read.” –T. Kingfisher – ” Every sentence sings!” –Sarah Beth Durst – “Utterly enchanting.” –Fonda Lee – “A story that outlasts itself.” –Alix E. Harrow – “Truly exquisite.” –Zoraida Córdova – ” A beautiful, musical, and loving story.” –Emma Törzs
“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…