Want to sample a variety of books and meet at a local restaurant to discuss the story? The Books on Tap book club offers readers a chance to meet on the first Monday of each month, except in September, at 6pm at Lil Beaver Brewery (5 Finance Drive in Bloomington) and discuss the novel selected for that month. There is no obligation to buy any food, but participants are welcome to order food. People can join a book club at any time and do not have to attend previous book club meetings to participate. We are happy to have you whenever you can attend!
Upcoming book club meetings are listed to the right. Click on the date you would like to attend to register online. You may also register by calling 309.590.6168 or by visiting us in person at the library Help Desk on the second floor.
The Library receives extra print copies of book club books leading up to the date of the meeting. To reserve one of the extra print copies of the next title to be discussed, contact the Help Desk by phone at 309.590.6168 or by email to reference@bloomingtonlibrary.org. Digital copies of each title (eBook or eAudiobook) may also be available through the Libby or Hoopla Apps.
January 6, 2025
Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
"Tiny Beautiful Things" is a collection of responses from the advice column written by the online personality, Dear Sugar, now known as author Cheryl Strayed. This book brings her wisdom to many more readers. Rich with humor, insight, compassion, and absolute honesty, this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.
February 3, 2025
Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, he is asked to authenticate a newly discovered work presumably composed by Delaney. Slowly, Hendricks begins to suspect the composer might have stolen his famous symphony.
March 3, 2025
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
The Mass Dragoning happened in 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of. But Alex wants to find out.
April 7, 2025
Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad
It's the holy month of Ramadan, and twin sisters Amira and Lina are about to graduate from high school in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On the precipice of adulthood, they plan to embark on a summer of teenage revelry, trying on new identities and testing the limits of what they can get away with while still under their parents' roof. But the twins' expectations of a summer of freedom collide with their older brother's return from prison, and his mysterious behavior threatens to undo the delicate family balance.
May 5, 2025
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei
This is a graphic novel memoir for George Takei, best known for his role in Star Trek and as an activist. Takei recounts firsthand what is was like in 1942, where at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to encampments behind barbed wire.
June 2, 2025
Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It by Greg Marshall
This is a hilarious and poignant memoir of Greg Marshall as he grapples with family, disability, and sexuality. He recounts stories about his mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemo treatments, and his dad's experience living with ALS.
July 7, 2025
How Can I Help You by Laura Sims
No one knows Margo’s real name. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper.
August 4, 2025
Does timing, circumstance, or luck impact your health care? This groundbreaking book reveals the hidden side of medicine and how unexpected—but predictable—events can profoundly affect our health. Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Why do kids born in the summer get diagnosed more often with A.D.H.D.? How are marathons harmful for your health, even when you're not running? This book explores those questions and more.
October 6, 2025
A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens by Raul Palma
Hugo Contreras’s world has shrunk. Since his wife died, Hugo’s debt from her medical bills has become insurmountable. One day, Hugo’s nemesis calls. Alexi Ramirez is a debt collector, and Hugo assumes this call is just more of the same. Except this time Alexi is calling because his house is haunted. Alexi proposes a deal: If Hugo can successfully cleanse his home before Noche Buena, Alexi will forgive Hugo’s debt. Hugo reluctantly accepts, but there’s one issue: Despite being a babaláwo, he doesn’t believe in spirits.
November 3, 2025
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
As a biracial, unenrolled tribal member and the product of a scandal, Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in. When her family is struck by tragedy, Daunis puts her dreams on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, the charming new recruit on her brother’s hockey team. After Daunis witnesses a shocking murder that thrusts her into a criminal investigation, she agrees to go undercover. But the deceptions—and deaths—keep piling up and soon the threat strikes too close to home.
December 1, 2025
Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all Charlie wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Uncle Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss You are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive by Eliot Stein.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Habibi by Craig Thompson.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum.
The Books on Tap Book Club will meet at Lil Beaver Brewery to discuss Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann.
February 5, 2026
You are Fatally Invited by Andre Pliego
When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.
March 5, 2026
Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our rarest cultural rites. Stein introduces readers to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self. From shadowing Scandinavia's last night watchman to meeting a 27th-generation West African griot to seeking out Cuba's last official cigar factory, Stein uncovers an almost lost world.
April 2, 2026
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
All her life Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the murder of planet Earth. Raised in the bowels of Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she readies herself to face the Wisdom, the all-powerful, reality-shaping weapon that gave the Majoda their victory over humanity. They are what’s left. They are what must survive. Kyr is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. But when Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons until she dies trying, she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands.
May 7, 2026
Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz
In recent years, the high-profile murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others have brought much-needed attention to the pervasiveness of police misconduct. Yet it remains nearly impossible to hold police accountable for abuses of power--the decisions of the Supreme Court, state and local governments, and policy makers have, over decades, made the police all but untouchable. In Shielded, University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Joanna Schwartz exposes the myriad ways in which our legal system protects police at all costs, with insightful analyses about subjects ranging from qualified immunity to no-knock warrants.
June 4, 2026
Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez
Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman, Emma, slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work. It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected.
July 2, 2026
Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest
By the time Effie Galanos starts her senior year, it feels like she’s already been thinking about college applications for an eternity—after all, finding a college that will be the perfect fit and be accessible enough for Effie to navigate in her wheelchair presents a ton of considerations that her friends don’t have to worry about. What Effie hasn’t told anyone is that she already knows exactly what school she has her heart set on: a college in NYC with a major in Mass Media & Society that will set her up perfectly for her dream job in digital media. But it turns out that the universe is full of surprises. As Effie navigates her way through a year of admissions visits, senior class traditions, internal and external ableism, and a lot of firsts--and lasts--she starts to learn that sometimes growing up means being open to a world of possibilities you never even dreamed of.
August 6, 2026
We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, in their pursuit of unfettered profits, preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companies’ founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone.
September 3, 2026
Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and greed; and as they discover the extraordinary depth—and frailty—of their connection.
October 1, 2026
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out.
November 5, 2026
Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum
eongju is burned out. With her high-flying career, demanding marriage, and bustling life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.
December 3, 2026
Three Bags Full: a Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann
Something is not right with George the shepherd. His sheep have gathered around him outside the cozy Irish village of Glennkill to assess the situation. George has cared for the sheep, reading them books every night, and now he lies pinned to the ground with a spade. His flock, far savvier about the workings of the human mind than your average sheep, sets out to find George’s killer, led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world). Together, the sheep discuss the crime late into the night, and their speculations vary wildly. Determined to unravel the mystery, they embark on furtive missions into the village, where they encounter a hoof-full of two-legged suspects.