Lit for Lunch Past Year Books and Information:
History of the series:
Lit for Lunch is a public book discussion series run continuously by Boise State University Professors of English Literature for almost half a century. Professors of British Literature Dr. Carol Martin and Dr. Jan Widmayer created the series in 1980. They held meetings at the YWCA on Washington Street in downtown Boise, which later became the WCA. Discussions were held monthly during the academic year. The series outgrew the WCA by 2004 and moved to the downtown Boise Public Library. When Jan Widmayer retired in 2008, Carol Martin introduced her colleague in English Literature, Dr. Cheryl Hindrichs, to the group as the series new codirector. Carol retired in 2014, and Cheryl directed the series on her own, sometimes inviting visiting scholars to partner with her in leading discussions. The series moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic and remained online until Cheryl died in 2022. After Cheryls’ death, Dr. Ann Campbell, Professor of English Literature, directed the series. She returned the series to the Boise Public Library for one year, and then moved it to the Osher Center for Lifelong Learning in 2023. In its early years, Lit for Lunch selections were based on themes such as obsessive love and works set during World War I and World War II. For a time, the series scheduled dinners and screenings of movies at The Flix. But one aspect of the series has never changed. It has always been free and open to all comers. The series continues to flourish and grow as newcomers to Boise join longtime participants to share their love of literature, community, and conversation.
2023/24
Friday Sept 1: The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Friday Oct 13: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Friday Nov 17: Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
(No December meeting because of holidays)
Friday January 5: Night Watch, Terry Pratchet
Friday Feb 2: The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
Friday March 1: My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
Friday April 12: The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert
Friday May 3: The Go-Between, LP Hartley
2022/23
Friday Nov 4: Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Friday, Jan 6: Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
Friday Feb 3: Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Friday April 7: A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
Friday May 5: The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
2020
Fall 2020: (Series Moves Online During COVID 19 Pandemic):
Pandemania! Reading in Isolation
“The Mask of the Red Death,” Edgar Allen Poe
Fever, A Novel, Mary Keane
They Came Like Swallows, William Maxwell
The Betrothed: Alessandro Manzoni
2019/20
Exile, Refuge, Home
Spring 2020:
The Forty Days of Masa Dagh, Franz Werfel
Not Without Laugher, Langston Hughes
The Tattooed Soldier, Hector Tobar
Go Went West, Jenny Erpenbeck
Fall 2019:
A Pure Heart, Rajia Hassib
The Refugees, Viet Than Nguyen
Exit West, Hohsin Hamid
The Latecomer, Kao Kalia Yang
2018/19
Melville at 200
Spring 2019:
“Billy Budd, Sailor,” Herman Melville
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick
“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” Herman Melville
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Fall 2018:
Mobie Dick, Herman Melville
2017/18
Spring 2018: Aftermath: Pandemic and WWI
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden
Radium girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore
Fall 2017: Modernism and WWI
To End all Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochchild
The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf
Some Do Not, Ford Maddox Ford
2016/17
Spring 2017: To Read or Not to Read: Hamlet
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike
Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
Fall 2016: King Lear and his Daughters
King Lear, Shakespeare
Pere Goriot, Honore de Balzac
A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
Fool, Christopher Moore
2015/16
Hungers, Feasts, and Cultures, Food Across Global Literature
Spring 2016:
All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki
Hunger, Elise Blackwell
The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
Gardens in the Dunes, Lelsie Marmon Silko
Fall 2015:
Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto
The Secret Lives of Bab Segi’s Wives, Lola Shoneyin
The Book of Salt, Monique Truong
Pig’s Tails N’ Breadfruit, Ausin Clarke
2014/15
Spring 2015: (Carol Martin Retires: Cheryl Martin Takes Over as Director of Series)
Benito Cereno, Herman Melville
The Nigger of the Narcissus, Joseph Conrad
Ship of Fools, Katherine Anne Porter
The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje
Fall 2014:
Novels about 1914
Life Class, Pat Barker
All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer
The Care and Management of Lies, Jacqueline Winspear
The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
2013/14
Spring 2014:
Travel, Authors Compose Portraits of Their Younger Selves from Their Matured Self
The True Adventures of a Sharecropper Kid, Lonnie Willis
Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley, John Rember
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, Dylan Thomas
Boyhood: Scenes from a Provincial Life, J. M. Coetzee
Fall 2013:
Gastronomical Reads
The Gastronomical Me, M. F. K Fisher
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, Ruth Reichl
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Gabrielle Hamilton
The Debt to Pleasure, John Lanchester
2012/13
Spring 2013:
Novels that Capture Intergenerational Dynamics
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Sing, May Sarton
The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
2011/2012
Spring 2012:
Twentieth Century Narratives of Midway Through the Journey of Life
The Year of the Hare, Arto Paasilinna
The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall
Bliss, Peter Carey
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
2010/11
Fall 2010:
Complex Person, Political, and Cultural Dynamics of the Refugee Experience from Different Points of View
The Road Home, Rose Tremain
What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Dave Eggers,
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi
The Clothes on Their Backs, Linda Grant
2009/10
Spring 2010:
Favorite Classics
Silas Marner, George Eliot
The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
Fall 2009:
Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
2008/09
Spring 2009:
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
A Grain of Wheat, Nugugi wa Thing
Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee
Fall 2008: (Jan Widmayer Retires: Cheryl Hindrichs Begins Co-Directing with Carol Martin)
Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Years, Virginia Woolf
The Lives of Girls and Women, Alice Monro
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, Mariana Lewycka
2007/08
Spring 2008:
The Summer Before the Dark, Doris Lessing
The Gathering, Anne Enright
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Fall 2007:
Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
A Woman in Berlin, Anonymous
The Sorrow of War, Bao Ninh
The Bookseller of Kabul, Asne Seirstad
2006/07
Spring 2007:
British Literature from the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries:
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
The Golden Bowl, Henry James
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Fall 2006:
Books Featuring Contemporary London as a Setting:
Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst
Only in London, Hanan al-Shaykh
Saturday, Ian McEwan
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
2006/05
Spring 2006:
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller
King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild
Purple Hibiscus, Chidamanda Ngozi Adichie
When Rain Clouds Gather, Bessie Head
Fall 2005:
Fiction and Memoirs by Writers from Different Parts of the Caribbean
Small Island, Andrea Levy
The Middle Passage, V. S. Naipaul
Krik? Krak!, Edwidge Danticat
Lucy, Jamaica Kinkaid
2004/05
Spring 2005:
Jan: Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freia Stark, Jane Fletcher Geniesse
Feb: Baghdad Sketches, Freia Stark
Mar: Brick Lane, Monica Ali
Distant View of a Minaret, Alifa Rifaat
Fall 2004: (Lit for Lunch Moves to Boise Public Library)
Historical Novels
Hunger: A Novel, Elise Blackwell
The Crimson Petal and the White, Michael Faber
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
Girl With a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
2003/04
Spring 2004:
Biography, History, and Fiction of the Middle East in the 20th Century
Desert Queen, Janet Wallach
A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
Cities of Salt, Abdelrahman Muif
When I Lived in Modern Times, Linda Grant
Fall 2003:
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Shell-Collector, Anthony Doerr
The Idea of Perfection, Kate Grenville
Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
2002/03
Fall 2002:
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, A Biography: Vol I, Voyaging, Janet Browne
The Lying Stones of Marrakech, Stephen Jay Gould
Mr. Darwin’s Shooter, Roger McDonald
Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
2002/01
Spring 2002:
Works Providing Insight into Current Events
The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong
Palace Walk, Naguib Mahfouz
In the Eye of the Sun, Ahdaf Soueif
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Fall 2001:
Jane Eyre Revisited
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
2000/01
Spring 2001:
Historical and Contemporary Views of African Life
Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth
Mary, Bessie Head
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
The Joys of Motherhood, Buchi Emercheta
Fall 2000:
“I’ve Been Meaning to Read This” Bookshelf
Morality Play, Barry Unworth
Lost in Translation, Nicole Monnes
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Letters from Yellowstone, Diane Smith
1999/2000
Spring 2000:
Historical Novels Set in the 19th Century
The Heart of Midlothian, Walter Scott
Romola, George Eliot
Sylvia’s Lovers, Elizabeth Gaskell
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Fall 1999:
Memoirs that Highlight Pivotal Points in the Twentieth Century
The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway
The North, Jill Ker Conway
Night, Elie Wiesel
The Sunflower, Simon Wiesenthal
Colored People, Henry Louis Gates
1998/99
Spring 1999:
Biography and Autobiography
The Unruly Queen, The Life of Queen Caroline, Flora Fraser
Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter, Diana Souhami,
A Personal History, Katharine Graham
The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty, Carolyn Heibrun
Fall 1999
Sep: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Oct: The Indian Lawyer, James Welch
1997/98
Spring 1998:
Works with Rural Settings
Adam Bede, George Eliot
Willy Slater’s Lane, Mitch Wieland
Oral History, Lee Smith
Song of the Lark, Willa Cather
The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Oscar and Lucinda”
Fall 1997: (The YWCA becomes the WCA):
Works Set in Ireland the 20th Century
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
Circle of Friends, Maeve Binchy
The House of Splendid Isolation, Edna O’Brien
The Woman Who Walked into Doors, Roddy Doyle
1996/97
Spring 1997:
Jan: The Ghost Road, Pat Barker
Feb: Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Mar: A Very Long Engagement, Sebastian Japrisot
Apr: Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Kate Atkinson
Fall 1996: Multicultural Works
Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson
Darkness, Bharati MukherjeeNov: The Grass Dancer, Susan Power
Dec: Clove and Cinnamon, Jorge Amado, Gabriela,
1995/96
Spring 1996:
Comedy in Novels By Women Writers
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macauley
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
Evelina, Frances Burney
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Persuasion”
Fall 1995:
British Travel Writing Tradition
Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, Isabella Bird Bishop
Travels in West Africa, Mary Kingsley
Journey’s Echo, Freya Stark
Christmas Books, Charles Dickens
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Picture Bride”
1994/95
Spring 1995: China
Wild Swans, Jung Chang
Six Records of a Floating Life, Fu Shen
Story of the Stone, Vol 1, Cao Xueqin
Bittersweet, Leslie Li
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “The Madness of King George”
Fall 1994: Obsessive Love
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Possession, A. S. Byatt
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatjee
Dirty Weekend, Helen Zahavi
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Barcelona” and “Mi Vida Loca”
1993/94
Spring 1994:
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Hour of the Hunter, J. A. Jance
Wise Children, Angela Carter
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “The Piano”
Fall 1993:
Independent Minded Women in Victorian Novels, with a Focus on Serialized Fiction
Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
Vanity Fair, William Thackeray
Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Sofie” and “Remains of the Day”
1992/93
Spring 1993:
Interrelationship of Fiction and Biography
Lady’s Maid, Margaret Forster
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Margaret Forster
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Daughters of the Dust”
Fall 1992:
Lecture: “The Victorian Novel as Soap Opera: Where Housewives and Heiresses, Factory Girls and Gentlemen Forgers Meet,” Speaker: Carol Martin
Cousin Phillis, Elizabeth Gaskell
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
1991-92
Fall 1991:
Writers outside the American and British Canon
West with the Night, Beryl Markham
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
1990-91
Spring 1991:
Writings by Women that We Should Have Read But Never Did (Or Never Even Heard Of):
Orookono, Aphra Behn
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “The Reincarnation of the Golden Lotus,” “Broken Rainbow,” and “Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead”
Fall 1990:
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
Dinner and a Movie at The Flix: “Crossroads” and “May Fools”
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