On the last Wednesday of most months, members and their guests gather at City Club Commons to discuss books written by Portland or Northwest authors, or that focus on topics relevant to the city or region. Discusions will include participation by the author or guest moderators whenever possible. The booklist will include a wide variety of titles: non-fiction, both serious and lighthearted, memoirs and some fiction.

These small-group discussions offer a way for bibliophiles to share their passion for literature and public life.

Upcoming Citizens Read Selections:

Click here for a PDF of spring selections.

This Month's Citizens Read Selection

The Right Mistake: The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow  

By Walter Mosley

Guest Speaker TBA

Wednesday, July 29
Doors open at 5:45; discussion 6:00-7:30
City Club Commons, 901 SW Washington St.
Space is limited - RSVP required: City Club, 503-228-7231 x110 or amy@pdxcityclub.org

What motivates civic involvement at a grassroots level? How does this involvement progress from thinking and talking to action? Join protagonist Socrates Fortlow - and his friends and enemies - as they explore these questions at their “Thursday Night Thinkers Club.” This short, exceedingly well-written book is profoundly moving, thoughtful and full of action.

NO AUGUST MEETING. Citizens Read will resume in September.

Next Month's Citizens Read Selection

Eden Within Eden: Oregon 's Utopian Heritage  
By James J. Kopp

AUTHOR ATTENDING

Wednesday, September 30
Doors open at 5:45; discussion 6:00-7:30
City Club Commons, 901 SW Washington St.
Space is limited - RSVP required: City Club, 503-228-7231 x110 or amy@pdxcityclub.org

Oregon has been the home of nearly 300 communal experiments since 1856. This book explores these communities and other areas of Oregon 's utopian heritage, including literary works and idealistic city planning. This book, the first of its kind in Oregon, was just published by Oregon State University Press.

Citizens Read Welcomes Your Suggestions!

Do you know of book that is of regional interest, with either a local author or theme? Citizens Read welcomes your suggestions for future book discussions. If you are interetsed in joining the planning group for Citizens Read, or would just like to share your idea, please email City Club or call 503-228-7231.

Past Citizens Read Selections

• Convictions: A Prosecutor's Battle Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves by Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, June 2009

• My Abandonment by Peter Rock, May 2009

• Beauty of the City: A.E. Doyle, Portland's Architect, by Philip Niles, April 2009

• Dance Lest We All Fall Down, by Margaret Willson, March 2009

• The Grail: A Year Ambling and Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wild World by Brian Doyle, February 2009

• Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror, by Steven T. Wax, January 2009
• Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey, March and April 2008
• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, February 2008
  (in partnership with Multnomah County Library's Everybody Reads)
• Strange as this Weather has Been by Ann Pancake, January 2008
• Portland Red Guide: Stories from Portland's Radical Past by Michael Munk, November 2007
• Community and the Politics of Place by Daniel Kemmis, October 2007
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver & Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon, September 2007
• Having Everything Right: Essays of Place by Kim Stafford, June 2007
• The Place You Love is Gone: Progress Hits Home by Melissa Holbrook Pierson, May 2007
• The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, April 2007
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, March 2007
• Midnight at the Dragon Cafe by Judy Fong Bates, February 2007
• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, January 2007
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, November 2006 
• Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee, October 2006
• Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, September 2006
• Storm Riders by Craig Lesley, July 2006
• City Limits, by David Oates, June 2006
• Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West, by Carl Abbott, May 2006
• Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert, April 2006
• American Vertigo, Bernard-Henri Lévy, March 2006
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, February 2006
• Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape and/or The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, by James Howard Kuntsler, December 2005/January 2006
• Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, by Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams and Jeremy C. Pope, November 2005
• Freakonomics, by by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, October 2005
• To the Flag, by Richard Ellis, September 2005
• Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, August 2005
• Saturday, by Ian McEwan, July 2005
• The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth, June 2005
• The United States of Europe, by T. R. Reid, May, 2005
• Collapse, by Jared Diamond, April 2005
• The Portland Edge, edited by Connie Ozawa, March 2005
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, February 2005
• Bobos in Paradise, by David Brooks, January 2005
• No selection for December 2004
• What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank, November 2004
• The Values Divide, by John White, October 2004
• Resistance, by Barry Lopez, September 2004
• Paradise Wild: Reimagining American Nature, by David Oates, August 2004
• Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, July 2004
• Birth of the Chaordic Age, by Dee Hock, June 2004
• The Great Good Place, by Ray Oldenburg, May 2004
• The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida, April 2004
• Portland: People, Politics and Power: 1851-2001, by Jewel Lansing, March 2004
• Better Together, by Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein, February 2004
• Oregon's Promise, by David Peterson Del Mar, January 2004