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Literature for Lunch Archives

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.

2024/25

  • Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (1875)
  • John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick (1984)
  • Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843):
  • Karen Brooks, The Good Wife of Bath (2022)
  • Paul Scott, Staying On (1977)
  • Alberto Urrea, The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2006)
  • April 4, 2024:  Louise Erdrich, The Sentence (2021)
  • Margarita Liberaki, Trans. Karen Van Dyck , Three Summers (1946, republished 1995)

2023/24

  • The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
  • Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  • Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner
  • Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
  • The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
  • My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
  • The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert
  • The Go-Between, LP Hartley

2022/23

  • Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
  • Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
  • Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
  • A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
  • 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 Hochschild
  • 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
  • Rosencrantz 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, Austin 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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