VSDC BOOK CLUB

The Veg Society of DC (VSDC) Book Club, started in 1992, reads fiction and nonfiction in alternating months, from classics to contemporary, about a wide range of topics. Since March 2020, the group has been meeting online. To join a discussion, read at least half the book and RSVP on VSDC’s meetup site. To see everything the book club has read, see below.

*** Authors: If you receive an email suggesting that Veg Society of DC might spotlight your book it is NOT from us! We do NOT ask authors for money! ***

An RSVP is required to attend. See the DC Area Vegan Meetup site for our upcoming meeting dates and to RSVP! Any questions, send Beth a message via Meetup.

THE VSDC BOOK CLUB
CELEBRATES 34 YEARS IN 2026!

BOOK SELECTIONS

At the end of each Book Club meeting, participants vote on whether they would recommend the book – yes, no, or “other.” We started asking this question at the April 1993 meeting. (Votes before then may not reflect all the participants.)

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	The Personal Librarian	Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray		10	2	1
February	Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy	Damien Lewis		8	0	1
March	Dear Committee Members	Julie Schumacher		3	2	2
April	Raising Hare: A Memoir	Chloe Dalton		10	0	2
May	The Eights	Joanna Miller		1	0	2
June	Finding Me	Viola Davis		5	0	1

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	March Book One and March Book Two	John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell		6	0	0
February	Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury	Sigrid Nunez		4	1	0
March	Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden	Camille T. Dungy		5	1	2
April	The Last Animal	Ramona Ausubel		3	0	3
May	Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood	Trevor Noah		13	1	2
June	The Vegan	Andrew Lipstein		2	4	2
July	The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women	Kate Moore		10	0	0
August	Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel	Shelby Van Pelt		11	0	4
September	The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth	Zoë Schlanger		3	1	3
October	Lessons in Chemistry	Bonnie Garmus		9	1	0
November	How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen	David Brooks		10	1	5

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	This Is How It Always Is	Laurie Frankel		10	0	0
February	Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest	Suzanne Simard		7	0	1
March	West with Giraffes	Lynda Rutledge		13	0	1
April	The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics	Daniel James Brown		9	0	1
May	The Grammarians	Cathleen Schine		5	2	3
June	The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating	Elisabeth Tova Bailey		14	1	0
July	Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel	Gabrielle Zevin		8	2	2
August	Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants	Robin Wall Kimmerer		12	1	2
September	Bewilderment	Richard Powers		7	1	3
October	Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World	Christian Cooper		9	1	3
November	Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH	Robert C. O'Brien		8	0	0

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy	Jamie Raskin		14	0	2
February	March	Geraldine Brooks		2	2	3
March	Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents	Isabel Wilkerson		9	0	0
April	Stella Peabody’s Wild Librarian Bakery and Bookstore: A Novel-in-Stories	Stacy Russo		0	1	3
May	What the Constitution Means to Me	Heidi Schreck		9	0	1
June	Trust	Hernan Diaz		6	1	3
July	The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea	Hyeonseo Lee		6	0	1
August	Intimacies	Katie Kitamura		6	1	1
September	An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us	Ed Yong		7	0	0
October	The Violin Conspiracy	Brendan Slocumb		6	0	0
November	The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War	Ben Macintyre		8	0	0

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Such a Fun Age	Kiley Reid		5	2	1
February	Healthy at Last: A Plant-Based Approach to Preventing and Reversing Diabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses	Eric Adams		12	0	0
March	The Vanishing Half	Brit Bennett		8	1	3
April	The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind	William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer		8	0	2
May	The Night Watchman	Louise Erdrich		3	1	0
June	Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects	Jonathan Balcombe		11	0	0
July	Beastly Things: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery	Donna Leon		8	0	0
August	Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future	Elizabeth Kolbert		8	1	2
September	The Seed Keeper	Diane Wilson		7	0	0
October	Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law	Mary Roach		6	2	3
November	Kindred	Octavia E. Butler		9	0	0

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote	Elaine Weiss		5	0	0
February	Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead	Olga Tokarczuk		6	0	0
March	How Democracies Die	Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zieblatt		9	0	0
April	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley		8	0	0
May	The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe	Gayle Tzemach Lemmon		9	0	0
June	All Creatures Great and Small	James Herriot		8	2	1
July	Our Symphony with Animals: On Health, Empathy, and Our Shared Destinies	Aysha Akhtar		11	0	0
August	Hamnet	Maggie O’Farrell		3	1	2
September	The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	Thomas Kuhn		0	2	1
October	The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek	Kim Michele Richardson		5	0	0
November	Fun Home	Alison Bechdel		6	0	1

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Charlotte’s Web	E.B. White		8	0	0
February	The Year of Living Biblically	A.J. Jacobs		4	1	0
March	It Can’t Happen Here	Sinclair Lewis		2	2	0
April	Bringing Down the Colonel	Patricia Miller		6	0	0
May	The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemingway		5	2	0
June	The Vegetarian Crusade	Adam Shprintzen		7	0	0
July	Conversations with Friends	Sally Rooney		3	2	2
August	We Are the Weather	Jonathan Safran Foer		14	1	0
September	The Joy Luck Club	Amy Tan		8	0	0
October	How to Survive a Pandemic	Michael Greger		11	2	0
November	Homegoing	Yaa Gyasi		8	0	0

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Always Too Much and Never Enough	Jasmin Singer		8	0	1
February	The Plot Against America	Philip Roth		7	0	0
March	Lab Girl	Hope Jahren		4	0	1
April	The Immortalists	Chloe Benjamin		3	0	1
May	Esther the Wonder Pig: Changing the World One Heart at a Time	Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter with Caprice Crane		7	0	0
June	There There	Tommy Orange		2	0	0
July	Killers of the Flower Moon	David Grann		5	0	0
August	An Unnecessary Woman	Rabih Alameddine		1	1	0
September	North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail	Scott Jurek and Jenny Jurek		4	1	3
October	The Good Earth	Pearl S. Buck		7	0	0
November	Small Fry	Lisa Brennan-Jobs		4	2	2

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	The Age of Innocence	Edith Wharton		3	0	0
February	The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds	Michael Lewis		6	1	1
March	The Green and the Red	Armand Chauvel		1	1	0
April	How to Create a Vegan World: A Pragmatic Approach	Tobias Leenaert		11	0	1
May	The Underground Railroad	Colson Whitehead		5	0	0
June	Eleanor and Hick: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady	Susan Quinn		6	0	0
July	Station Eleven	Emily St. John Mandel		0	2	0
August	Ageless Vegan: The Secret to Living a Long and Healthy Plant-Based Life	Tracye McQuirter and Mary McQuirter		10	0	0
September	The Mayor of Casterbridge	Thomas Hardy		2	0	0
October	Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?	Frans de Waal		3	1	1
November	Less	Andrew Sean Greer		2	1	1

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Meatonomics	David Robinson Simon		5	0	2
February	The Vegetarian	Han Kang		5	1	3
March	Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption	Bryan Stevenson		7	0	1
April	Redeployment	Phil Klay		2	1	0
May	The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness	Sy Montgomery		7	2	3
June	The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy	Douglas Adams		10	0	2
July	What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of our Underwater Cousins	Jonathan Balcombe		8	0	1
August	Scoop	Evelyn Waugh		1	1	1
September	The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals	Charles Darwin		1	4	1
October	The Handmaid’s Tale	Margaret Atwood		8	1	0
November	Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City	Matthew Desmond		9	0	0

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Off the Reservation	Glen Merzer		4	1	4
February	Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End	Atul Gawande		6	0	3
March	My Brilliant Friend	Elena Ferrante		5	0	1
April	Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II	Vicki Croke		3	0	3
May	Leaving Time	Jodi Picoult		5	2	1
June	The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History	Elizabeth Kolbert		7	0	3
July	Jerry’s Vegan Women	Ben Shaberman		2	2	2
August	The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically	Peter Singer		8	1	3
September	The Bear Went Over the Mountain	William Kotzwinkle		3	2	2
October	The Glass Castle	Jeannette Walls		3	0	1
November	Dietland	Sarai Walker		2	2	2

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Defiant Daughters: 21 Women on Art, Activism, Animals, and the Sexual Politics of Meat	Kara Davis and Wendy Lee, eds.		3	0	4
February	The Rosie Project: A Novel	Graeme Simsion		3	0	1
March	The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals	Jenny Brown		10	0	1
April	Dog On It	Spencer Quinn		3	4	3
May	A Fighting Chance	Elizabeth Warren		8	1	0
June	The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry	Gabrielle Zevin		5	0	1
July	The Lusty Vegan: A Cookbook and Relationship Manifesto for Vegans and Those Who Love Them	Ayinde Howell and Zoe Eisenberg		1	3	5
August	The Adventures of Vivian Sharpe, Vegan Superhero	Marla Rose		7	0	0
September	Will Travel for Vegan Food	Kristin Lajeunesse		8	1	3
October	Lord of the Flies	William Golding		4	1	3
November	The Astronaut Wives Club	Lily Koppel		4	1	4

				RECOMMEND?
MONTH	TITLE	AUTHOR		YES	NO	OTHER
January	Where’d You Go, Bernadette	Maria Semple		7	0	3

VSDC book club selections 1992-2021 (pdf)