The California Book Club values humane, thoughtful, and revealing exchanges. For the past five years, our Zoom gatherings on the third Thursday of the month have been lively and often moving—2025 was no exception. It is a challenge to select singular moments when you’re choosing between writers like Manuel Muñoz, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Amy Tan. But we persevered and selected a handful of memorable insights from a year of far-ranging conversations that brought us pleasure and an ever-increasing appreciation of these authors’ works.
Whether you’re a bibliophile or an infrequent literature consumer looking for meaningful reads, sign up for the book club here. To read essays and literary criticism about the current quarter’s books and to view past author videos, visit us here. And you can click on each title below to watch the entire event.
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen joined us in January to discuss his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Sympathizer, with host John Freeman and special guests Don McKellar and Rumaan Alam. The conversation explored Nguyen’s Catholic upbringing, political and moral questions he sought to raise in his book, the novel’s adaptation to the screen, its form and voice, and literature as a way of belonging.
The Consequences, Manuel Muñoz
In February, Manuel Muñoz visited the club (with special guest Talia Lakshmi Kolluri) to discuss his short story collection The Consequences. Muñoz covered the craft of writing short fiction; faith, which has an important presence in the book; literary influences; poverty; deportation and immigration; and the Central Valley.
The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, Manjula Martin
Joined by special guest Susan Orlean at our June gathering, Manjula Martin talked with Freeman about the blend of memoir, history, and reportage that went into her work The Last Fire Season. They conversed about redwood trees, engaging with Indigenous cultures, colonization in California, the 2020 wildfires in Northern California, prescribed burns, finding the right voice for a book, and writing about the self.
California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State's New Literature, John Freeman
October’s event was structured differently from others because special guest host Walter Mosley interviewed John Freeman about his new literary essay collection, California Rewritten. The conversation, which landed on the fifth anniversary of the CBC, delved into Freeman’s calling as a critic, California’s heterogeneity, the state’s political history as captured in Freeman’s book, authorial voice, and writing as a form of celebration.
Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada Limón
November provided us the opportunity to celebrate the work of Ada Limón, who joined Freeman and special guest Matthew Zapruder to consider her collection of new and selected poems, Startlement. The discussion touched on wonder, accessing startlement and a feeling of immensity, animals, Sonoma, selecting poems for a new-and-selected poems collection, being raised by an artist, and the mystery of the self.
And for those reading the fine print, here are all the books we featured in 2025: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Manuel Muñoz’s The Consequences, Rita Bullwinkel’s Headshot, Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, Claire Vaye Watkins’s Gold Fame Citrus, Manjula Martin’s The Last Fire Season, Rosanna Xia’s California Against the Sea, Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings, Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles, John Freeman’s California Rewritten, Ada Limón’s Startlement, and Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain.•
