Virtual Book Club
Read for fun with Calvin alum!
You remember the days on campus when you longed to spend your free time the way you wanted to—biking, relaxing with friends, catching up on your favorite movies, reading for fun...
Now is your chance! Get together with other Calvin alum (primarily online, but also in person if you want!) to read and discuss for pleasure.
Calvin has partnered with an outside book club company to offer this benefit to alum. In this online community, alumni can connect and enjoy books related to lifelong learning, social issues, literature, psychology, and other user-submitted ideas. There is no cost to participate—you just need to get a copy of the book to enjoy.
How it works
The book club will connect through a private online forum where people can discuss the current book and network with each other. The group will spend two months on each book, so you'll have plenty of time to read.
Currently Reading
We are currently reading The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts.
Enjoy this synopsis: In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she lived restfully. He offered her a spot in the county's charity home. Instead, she decided she wanted to see the Pacific Ocean just once before she died. She bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, loaded up her horse, and headed out from Maine in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. She had no map, no GPS, no phone. But she had her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.
Between 1954 and 1956, Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, journeyed more than 4,000 miles, through America's big cities and small towns, meeting ordinary people and celebrities--from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers--a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher who loved animals as much as she did. As Annie trudged through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by her at terrifying speeds, she captured the imagination of an apprehensive Cold War America. At a time when small towns were being bypassed by Eisenhower's brand-new interstate highway system, and the reach and impact of television was just beginning to be understood, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.