The reading group is open to alumni living in the Puget Sound region. The group is hosted by Peter Greenfield '67 and meets on the third Wednesday of most months. Reading group discussions start at 7:30 p.m. and, generally, end by 9:30 p.m. Anyone who has read the month’s selection is invited to take part. New participants are welcome, and no long-term commitment is required. To preserve the character of the conversation, participation is limited to the first ten people who RSVP to each discussion. Meetings are typically held by videoconference using Zoom but the group occasionally chooses to meet in person.

Read a list of the books and films discussed by the group from 1991 through February 2024 in our PDF document.

December discussion: Past Lives, a film directed by Celine Song
Traditionally, the group chooses a film for the December discussion
When: December 18, 2024
Where: On Zoom
RSVP: To petergreenfield@msn.com by December 15th to request the Zoom link. To preserve the character of the conversation, participation is limited to the first ten people who request a link.

This semi-autobiographical film follows the life of Na Young who, at the age of 12, leaves her native South Korea with her parents and moves first to Toronto and later to New York City. By her mid thirties, she is settled there, with a promising writing career, a New York Jewish husband, also a writer, and a new name, Nora Moon.

Among her classmates in Seoul, one boy, named Hae Sung, had become a close friend. The two lost contact when her family left for North America, but some twelve years later they found each other online and had a series of conversations. Another decade passed before she heard again from Hae Sung, who was then planning a trip to New York. Their meeting was an occasion to think about the path Nora's life had taken and what it might have been had she taken a different one. Or what it might be.

“Past Lives is a wistful what-if story about two people, the children they were and the adults they become. The movie follows them through the years and across assorted reunions, separations and continents as well as milestones momentous and ordinary. It’s a tale of friendship, love, regret and what it means to truly live here and now."

– "Past Lives Review: Longing for a Future," Manohla Dargis, New York Times, June 1, 2023.

Past Lives can be streamed on more than ten streaming platforms.

January Book: The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope
When: January 15, 2025
Where: To be determined.

The 1870s must have been an exciting decade for anyone inclined to compile a best-works-of-fiction list. Dickens was at work on his final (unfinished) novel, and Tolstoy, George Eliot and Henry James were among the writers producing some of their best work. The middle of the decade saw the publication of an enduring novel by one of the most prolific and most admired of English writers, Anthony Trollope. More than a century later, novelist Amanda Craig would write:

"Trollope could portray almost as wide a social range as Dickens and his sympathy for women is unexpected and delicate; his bluff manner conceals something more subtle. Above all, he is a god confident of his creations. . . . His dialogue and sense of drama make his characters breathe; if he lacks the grand 'bow-wow' strain and language of Dickens, his ear for the way real people speak is impeccable. His least popular novel in his lifetime, The Way We Live Now, has become the one we most admire him for. The irony in that is one Trollope, above all, would relish."

– "Book Of A Lifetime: The Way We Live Now, By Anthony Trollope," Independent, May 1, 2009

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Two additional books have been selected, but not yet scheduled, for discussion in 2025. They are Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner, and The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Nobel Prize in Literature 2024)