St. Paul’s Book Club

You’re invited to join St. Paul’s Book Club. We meet virtually via Zoom on the second and fourth Tuesday at 6:30 pm, and we read one book a month from a variety of different genres. You don’t need to join in for every book discussion; we have people who come because they are interested in a particular book. You can also join the discussion for only the fourth Tuesday when we all have finished the book if that fits better in your schedule. The group is welcoming and lively, and we all enjoy the difference in age, interest, and experiences. For more information please contact Donna Dick. 

July 23 – The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Phillip Sendker

The first book in the Art of Hearing Heartbeats series, this is a passionate love story, a haunting fable, and an enchanting mystery set in Burma. 

When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be…until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion that will reaffirm the reader’s belief in the power of love to move mountains. 

August 13th & 27th – How to Know a Person by David Brooks

*David Brooks will be coming to Toledo to talk about his book and do a Q &A as a part of the Neighbor to Neighbor Events!

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”

And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.