
What we’re about
Meet kindred book lovers in a local Meetup Book Club! Fiction or non-fiction, paperback or hardcover, you'll read a new book (or two!) every month. Come to laugh, share stories and make new friends!
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- May 2025 — Trust Exercise, by Susan ChoiTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CA
📖 Why this book? 📖
WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
"Electrifying" (People)
• "Masterly" (The Guardian)
• "Dramatic and memorable" (The New
Yorker)
• "Magic" (TIME) • "Ingenious" (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary perfor-mance" (Entertainment Weekly) • "Rare and splendid" (The Boston Globe) • "Remarkable" (USA Today) • "Delicious" (The New York Times) • "Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR)Hard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
💬 We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes,
🧊 at 7pm we do a brief icebreaker in which we mention a book or author we recommend,
📕 and then we start our book discussion.👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$5 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $5 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving "Brotherhood of the Arts," two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed — or untoyed with — by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.
The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school's walls — until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down.
What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true — though it's not false, either. It takes until the book's stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place — revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.
As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave listeners with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.
- June 2025 — West with Giraffes, by Lynda RutledgeTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CA
📖 Why this book? 📖
AN EMOTIONAL, ROUSING NOVEL INSPIRED BY THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF TWO GIRAFFES WHO MADE HEADLINES AND WON THE HEARTS OF DEPRESSION-ERA AMERICA.
• "A delightful read." —The New York Times Book Review
• "West with Giraffes is truly a fun read...I [can't] imagine a reading list that would not contain Lynda Rutledge's astonishing novel." —Old Naples News
• "Every year I find at least one book that soars above all the others. This year West With Giraffes is that book." —Florida Times UnionMORE PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR
• "A flawless novel." —Austin American-Statesman
• "A perfect balance between history and fiction." —POPSUGAR
• "[A] larger-than-life story about the power of both animal magnetism and human connection...witty, charming, and heartwarming." -BooklistHard to find a copy? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
💬 We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes,
🧊 at 7pm we do a brief icebreaker in which we mention a book or author we recommend,
📕 and then we start our book discussion.👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$5 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $5 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns
(Heads up: Time-Tested Books can run a bit warm after hot downtown days like these. 😅)
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
"Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes..."
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California's first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world's first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.
Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it's too late.
- July 2025 — The Small and the Mighty, by Sharon McMahonTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CA
📖 Why this book? 📖
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From America's favorite government teacher, a heartfelt, inspiring portrait of twelve ordinary Americans whose courage formed the character of our country.
Published September 23, 2024
Hard to find a book? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library.
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door willl be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
💬 We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes,
🧊 at 7pm we do a brief icebreaker in which we mention a book or author we recommend,
📕 and then we start our book discussion.👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$5 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $5 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns
(Heads up: Time-Tested Books can run a bit warm after hot downtown days like these. 😅)
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn't make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers.
Through meticulous research, she discovers history's unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.
You'll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing isbombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made
America - and Americans - great. McMahon's cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free. - August 2025 — Hell of a Book, by Jason MottTime Tested Books, Sacramento, CA
📖 Why this book? 📖
2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER
THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Shortlist, 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award Shortlist, 2022 Carnegie Medal LonglistA Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club
Pick!An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club
Pick!One of Washington Post's 50 Notable
Works of Fiction | One of Philadelphia Inquirer's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" | EW's "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" | One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults | San Diego Union Tribune - My Favorite Things from 2021 | Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021 | Atlanta Journal Constitution — Top 10 Southern Books of the Year I One of the Guardian's (UK) Best Ten 21st Century Comic Novels | One of Entertainment Weekly's 15 Books You Need to Read This June | On Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" | One of the New York Post's Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA's 27 Books for June | One of USA Today's 5 Books Not to Miss | One of Fortune's 21 Most Anticipate Books Coming Out in the Second Half of 2021 | One of The Root's PageTurners: It's Getting Hot in Here I One of Real Simple's Best New Books to Read in 2021An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole
Hard to find a book? Suggest a title or use Zip Books at your local library.
💠 What can I expect? 💠
We will meet in-person after hours in Time Tested Books. Front door will be unlocked, and staff will point the way.
💬 We catch up socially for the first 30 minutes,
🧊 at 7pm we do a brief icebreaker in which we mention a book or author we recommend,
📕 and then we start our book discussion.👜 WHAT DO I BRING? 👜
◾️A snack to share (whatever you like!)
◾️$5 (cash or venmo, details below)
◾️And you could bring your book 😄✴️ Event Details ✴️
The $5 is split between two things: our access to this Meetup platform and our access to the meeting location.
Meetup has raised its annual fees, and Time Tested Books is keeping the store open after hours for our group. You can venmo me (https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Bon) or bring cash.
However❕We would never want you to miss a book club discussion because of the $5, so please message me if you have any concerns
(Heads up: Time-Tested Books can run a bit warm after hot downtown days like these. 😅)
Thanks, and see you all soon!
📚 ** BOOK SUMMARY ** 📚
In Jason Mott's Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity
tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott's novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.As these characters' stories build and con-verge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it's also about the nation's reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.