Critical Reading Required Book Club

Welcome to our newest book club: Critical Reading Required! This is a mix of contemporary literary fiction and contemporary nonfiction and is a deeper dive into each book than our other book clubs.

Critical Reading is defined as: a way of reading that involves actively analyzing and interpreting a text in a more complex way wherein you question the text and your own understanding of it, which is what we intend to do with each book we read in this club. 

This year we are going to tuck into such subject matters as nature & climate change, literary canon reinterpretations, body positivity movement, transgender identities, cults and the language of fanaticism, influencers & internet culture, intersectional feminism, deconstruction, and more! 

2025 Critical Reading Required Book Club Schedule

 

Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for free speech on the front lines of our vicious culture wars.

“Amanda Jones started getting death threats, all for standing up for our right to read . . . but she’s not stopped fighting against book bans, or stopped advocating for access to diverse stories.”—Oprah Winfrey, at the 2023 National Book Awards

Small town librarian Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. When she stood up for diverse perspectives at a public library board meeting, she became a target for extremists using book banning campaigns—funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians—in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and “Christian.” But Amanda Jones wouldn’t give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance.

Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against intellectual freedom, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.