Daytime Book Club: My Friends

About the event

Come join the Daytime Book Club as we discuss this month's book! New members are always welcome (we love meeting new people!). Registration is appreciated but not required.

This month we will discuss My Friends by Fredrik Backman. The description for the book is below: "Most people don't even notice them: three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it's just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There's Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there's the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa's care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting's birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don't always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art."

We look forward to seeing you all soon!

Interested in attending a future Daytime Book Club meeting? Take a look at our reading list below:

May 2026: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

June 2026: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

July 2026: A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst

August 2026: My Friends by Fredrik Backman

September 2026: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

October 2026: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

November 2026: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt

December 2026: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

January 2027: What We Can Know by Ian McEwan

February 2027: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

March 2027: Proud Shoes by Pauli Murray

April 2027: Isola by Allegra Goodman