Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

About a year after I moved to Michigan, one of my co-workers—who must have noticed that I spent nearly every lunch hour reading—invited me to join her book club. She hastened to add, though, that the book club actually didn’t ever meet, nor did its members ever discuss the books they read. A veteran of numerous book clubs that had fizzled due to scheduling difficulties or a general lack of commitment to reading and talking about the selected volumes, I was intrigued.

This was really more of a book circle, my (now-former) colleague explained. In August, each member purchased one book that she wanted to read in the year ahead; the book had to be new-ish (still available in hardcover), and preferably written by a woman. One member of the group took responsibility for compiling the list of selections and organizing a schedule for passing the books along (roughly once a month) in the coming year. On the appointed day, I’d receive a book from the person ahead of me, and in turn I’d drop off the book I’d received the previous month at the house of the person below me on the list. One by one, we would each rotate through everyone’s selections—reading them (or not) on our own schedule, and with no need to show up anywhere and share our thoughts on the books. Our only obligation was to pass the book on time and keep the flow moving.

I’m now into my seventh year as a member of this book circle and can definitively say it’s the most sustainable version of a book club for me. Because we’ve each picked a book according to our own taste, I get exposed to authors and genres beyond my usual repertoire. Some months I open the book as soon as I receive it; sometimes it lingers on my coffee table, and after I eventually read 20 or 30 pages I put it aside, hoping that I’ll enjoy next month’s selection more. And sometimes, when I get busy, I just never open the book at all and simply pass it along when the appointed date arrives.

My picks have generally been new memoirs by women, and I chose one again this year, opting for They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us by journalist Prachi Gupta. I selected Gupta’s book based entirely on a tweet recommendation by someone whose opinion I trust, and having now read it I can wholeheartedly second that recommendation. If you aren’t familiar with Prachi Gupta’s work and/or haven’t read reviews of They Called Us Exceptional, I say don’t; this is a book that benefits from being read without prior knowledge about how events play out. (I wrote a short spoiler-free 5-star review at Goodreads.)

I hope that the other members of my book circle find Gupta’s extended letter to her mother as beautiful and affecting as I did—but chances are, I’ll never know. That’s just the way the book circle works.

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As Elon Musk continues to render Twitter more and more unusable, I’m giving Bluesky a try—follow me there.

Recommendations

China Stories
Jessica Batke, “Holding Sway: China’s United Front Work Department, Known for Its Influence Operations Abroad, Is Even Busier at Home”
Rachel Cheung, “China’s Confucius Institutes Go South”
Ananth Krishnan, “The Newsclick case: ‘Saving’ India from China, by becoming more like China?”
Billy H.C. Kwok and Summer Sun, “Then Suddenly It Was Gone: A Portrait of Hong Kong”
David Pierson, “The 8-Year-Old Boy at the Heart of a Fight Over Tibetan Buddhism”
Alan Rappeport, “A Rural Michigan Town Is the Latest Battleground in the U.S.-China Fight”
Keith B. Richburg, “Is Xi Jinping all-powerful or weak? Depends on whom you ask.”
Shen Lu and Wenxin Fan, “How a Japanese Sociologist Became a Chinese Feminist Icon”
Zeyi Yang, “Deepfakes of Chinese influencers are livestreaming 24/7”
Li Yuan, “China Is Suffering a Brain Drain. The U.S. Isn’t Exploiting It.”
Irene Zhang, “The Average Chinese City”

Wanderings Around the World
Karin Brulliard, “Colorado’s buzzy Buffaloes may lose, but Ralphie is always ‘undefeated’”
Andrew Higgins, “‘Our Language Is Dying’”
Rebecca Tan, “Asia’s youngest nation emerges as a voice of conscience on Myanmar”
Gregory Zuckerman, “After Shunning Scientist, University of Pennsylvania Celebrates Her Nobel Prize”

Standout Story
This week brought the launch of a new website, China Books Review. A co-production of The Wire China and the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, China Books Review is edited by Alec Ash, a writer and editor whom I’ve known for years and worked with on various projects. Available online without a paywall, CBR will publish twice weekly and feature an array of reviews (obviously), author interviews and profiles, book excerpts, videos, a podcast, and more.

CBR launched with a handful of such offerings; especially notable and worth your click is a review essay by Zheng Churan (one of the Feminist Five detained in 2015) about a book that collects the voices and stories of female factory workers in Shenzhen.

Follow CBR on all the usual social platforms, or keep up with new posts via their biweekly newsletter.

Feature Photo: Sunrise over Lake of the Clouds at Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, September 2, 2023.