I had a really fun experience this week. As many of you know, my wife Gillian is not only the active owner of our store but also the sitting President of the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA). Their Fall conference took place this week in Providence. Tuesday night was the awards banquet where New England authors were recognized for recent books in several writing categories. As president, Gillian selects a writer for lifetime achievement. Her choice this year was a bit of a Hail Mary when she invited the notoriously reticent John Irving to attend and, to our surprise, he accepted. John lives in Toronto these days and chose to fly in and out of Boston to avoid connections. He needed a ride to and from Providence and decided to carpool down with me. Given the weather and the last couple of days I ended up with almost 4 hours of conversation with John who turned out to be super easy going, willing to roll with the traffic and, as you can probably imagine, a great storyteller.

I have a couple of weeks of travel ahead of me so I thought I'd do a mid-meeting check a little earlier than usual to see that everyone is on their way. As a reminder our next meeting is on Wednesday, October 11th at 7pm. We're reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford. Hope you can all make it!

Dave Eggers (Hologram for the King) has a literary website called McSweeney's that puts out some really great stuff. If you haven't seen it already, you'll want to checkout the link below:

If Bostonians Loved Other Local Institutions the Way They Love Their Local Sports Franchises

Lastly, I had several requests at the end of the evening for an updated list of the books we've read. You can always find the syllabus for Bill's Book Group for Guys under the "Events" tab on the Wellesley Books website. That said, I've attached the list below.

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Cooper's Creek by Alan Moorehead

The New Confessions by William Boyd

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Headlong by Michael Frayn

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

The Son by Phillipp Meyer

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler