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# How to Read a Book BOOK CLUB KIT
- URL: https://readerswithwrinkles.com/how-to-read-a-book-book-club-kit/
- Published: 2026-10-31T15:36:32.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-31T15:36:32.000Z
- Description: Book Club Kit
- Author: Readers with Wrinkles
- Tags: Book Club Kits, Genre: Fiction

###### In this kit:

- Book Summary Page (Online & Printable Kit)
- Main Characters Page (Online & Printable Kit)
- Discussion Questions Page (Online & Printable Kit)
- Book Quotes Page (Online & Printable Kit)
- Icebreaker Games (Printable Kit only)
- About the Author Page (Online & Printable Kit)
- Historic Facts Surrounding the Book (Online & Printable Kit)
- List of Podcasts and Videos About This Book (Online only)
- Meeting Decoration Ideas (Online & Printable Kit)
- Meeting Decorations Printable Images (Printable Kit only)
- Meeting Menu Ideas (Online & Printable Kit)
- Email Templates for Announcing the Book Club Meeting (Printable Kit only)
- Meeting Food Recipes (Printable Kit only)
- Bookmarks for ***How to Read a Book*** (Printable Kit only)
- Bookmarks for Readers With Wrinkles (Printable Kit only)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/summary.jpg)

Some novels are about books. ***How to Read a Book*** is about readers: the ones who hide paperbacks under a prison cot like treasure, the ones who type up discussion questions every Thursday night, and the ones who would never call themselves readers at all until a story knocks them flat. Monica Wood’s 2024 novel follows three wounded, wonderfully ordinary people whose lives collide in a Portland, Maine, bookstore, and asks whether a person can be more than the worst thing she has ever done.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/How-to-Read-a-Book-by-Monica-Wood.jpg)

Twenty-two-year-old Violet Powell is nearing the end of her sentence at a women’s prison in Maine. At nineteen, drunk on love, liquor, and pills, and behind the wheel because her fiancé Troy insisted, she drifted into the wrong lane on a country road. The oncoming driver, a sixty-one-year-old kindergarten teacher named Lorraine Daigle, swerved into a tree and died. Violet calls Lorraine her “Reason,” the word the incarcerated women use for the crime no one talks about, and she carries her everywhere.

What keeps Violet afloat inside is Friday Book Club, led by Harriet Larson, a sixty-four-year-old widow and retired English teacher the women affectionately call “Bookie” or “the Book Lady.” Harriet hands out methodical, typed questions, but what she really offers is respect. Her mantra becomes the women’s own: I am a reader. I am intelligent. I have something worthy to contribute. Together they argue over ***Ethan Frome***, puzzle through ***Franny and Zooey***, and find themselves in the dead townspeople of ***Spoon River Anthology***.

Across town, Frank Daigle, Lorraine’s sixty-eight-year-old widower and a retired machinist, is drifting. He has taken a job as the handyman at a small independent bookstore run by young people who make him feel useful again. Frank carries a secret that has sealed him off even from his devoted daughter, Kristy: on the day Lorraine died, their marriage was already over. She had confessed to an affair and was planning to leave him, and the night before the crash he had sent her to sleep in the guest room. His grief is tangled up with anger, relief and a shame he cannot name.

One morning all three land in the same bookstore. Harriet is choosing the next book for the women inside. Frank is up a ladder. And Violet, newly released early for good behavior, has come to buy the novel she was reading when she left prison. When Frank recognizes the young woman who killed his wife, he freezes, moans and falls from the ladder, and Harriet sweeps a sobbing Violet out the door and into her life.

Violet’s family wants nothing to do with her. Her mother died of cancer while she was in prison, her sister Vicki has settled her in a bare Portland apartment with instructions not to come home to Abbott Falls, and every job application asks the same question about her record. Harriet feeds her, lends her books and quietly takes her in hand. Through Harriet’s niece Sophie, Violet lands a job at a research lab run by Dr. Mikhail “Misha” Petrov, a brilliant, moody scientist who studies the minds of African grey parrots. Among the birds, especially the overlooked Ollie, Violet discovers she is gifted, patient, and needed. She also falls for Misha, who is married.

Meanwhile, Frank and Harriet discover each other. Frank, ashamed of his reaction in the store, crafts a pair of bookends in his garage workshop and gives them to Violet as an apology. She cannot understand how a man whose wife she killed could be kind to her, and Frank cannot understand how to accept the forgiveness she keeps trying to hand him. Slowly the three become a kind of family. Frank and Harriet even drive Violet home to Abbott Falls to visit her mother’s grave, where she finally stands up to the relatives who have shut her out.

Then the ground shifts. Harriet is barred from the prison after accepting a small knitted bird from the women, and the loss of Book Club leaves her feeling useless for the first time since retirement. She turns to Frank, and their friendship becomes a late-life love affair. Kristy, who idolizes her mother, suspects her father of something she can’t prove. At the lab, Misha’s wife discovers his affair with Violet. Violet resigns, and on her way out the door she takes Ollie with her.

The novel closes on one quiet, extraordinary evening. Frank and Harriet bring Violet and Ollie to Harriet’s house for dinner, only to find Dawna-Lynn, Violet’s friend from Book Club, sitting in the living room after escaping from prison. Rather than calling the police at once, the three feed her, and Violet helps her shower. It is a small act of mercy that mirrors every mercy Violet has received.

Throughout the book an older Violet has been speaking to us from the end of a long life, and in the final pages we learn what became of her: Frank and Harriet became the parents she needed, she married twice, raised children, and lived a full life. Her closing epitaph, written in the spirit of Spoon River, sums up the novel’s heart: “My name was Violet Powell. I took a life. I lived and died. Meanwhile, I was loved.

***How to Read a Book*** is about guilt and forgiveness, second chances, late-life love, and the strange way a shared story can make strangers into family. It is also a quiet lesson in reading itself: slow down, look for the layers, and pay attention to the “meanwhile,” the important thing happening while the rest of the story moves along.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/characters.jpg)

**Violet Powell**  
The novel’s heart and one of its three narrators. A twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, raised in a strict church community, Violet was a “born reader” as a child. She is released early from a women’s prison after serving time for vehicular manslaughter in the death of Lorraine Daigle. Tender, funny, painfully honest, and still oddly innocent, she is cut off by her family and must build a new life in Portland. Working with African grey parrots, she discovers her own gifts. An older Violet narrates her chapters from the far end of a long life.

**Harriet Larson**  
A sixty-four-year-old retired English teacher and widow who volunteers to lead the Friday Book Club at the women’s prison, where she is known as “Bookie” and “the Book Lady.” Harriet treats the women as equals and fellow readers, and the club gives her as much purpose as it gives them. Raised to say yes to everyone, she went to college only after her husband Lou died. Now, facing an empty nest, she takes Violet under her wing and finds unexpected love.

**Frank Daigle**  
A sixty-eight-year-old retired machinist and Lorraine’s widower. Quiet, handy and deeply decent, Frank works as the handyman at a Portland bookstore, where the young staff give him a reason to get up in the morning. He carries the secret that his marriage was ending when Lorraine died, and the guilt of feeling something like relief. In his garage workshop he makes things, including the bookends he gives Violet as an apology.

**Lorraine Daigle**  
Frank’s wife, a beloved kindergarten teacher killed at sixty-one when Violet’s car crossed into her lane. Violet calls her “my Reason.” To her daughter she was a perfect mother. To Frank, who knew of her affair and her plan to divorce him, she leaves a far more complicated legacy.

**Kristy Daigle**  
Frank and Lorraine’s grown daughter, fiercely devoted to her mother’s memory and worried about her father. Her victim impact statement at the trial devastated Violet. Kristy believes her mother’s story of the marriage, and Frank cannot bring himself to tell her the truth.

**Sophie Martin**  
Harriet’s college-bound niece, the daughter of Harriet’s late sister Corinne, who lives with Harriet. Sophie works in Dr. Petrov’s parrot lab, which leads to Violet’s job there. Her plans to move on leave Harriet facing an empty house.

**Dr. Mikhail “Misha” Petrov**  
A Russian-born behavioral scientist who studies cognition in African grey parrots. Brilliant, temperamental and charming, he recognizes Violet’s talent with the birds, and their workplace banter turns into an affair, even though he is married.  
  
**Ollie and Charlotte**  
Two of the African greys in Misha’s lab. Charlotte is the star pupil who can outsmart the shell game. Ollie is the bird who “fails” his tasks and is often overlooked, and the one Violet loves best and finally carries out of the lab with her.

**Dawna-Lynn (“Showtime”)**  
A Book Club member with a glorious singing voice, nearing the end of a fifteen-year sentence. Funny, gritty and full of life, she breaks down after being denied a new trial and escapes, turning up in Harriet’s living room in the final chapters. She becomes Violet’s friend for life.

**The Book Club women**  
Violet’s fellow readers inside, including Brittie (Violet’s cellmate), Little Aimee, Dorothy, Shayna, Desiree, Jacynta, Kitten, Marielle and Big Jenny. They prefer the classics to modern “inspirational” novels and never talk about their “Reasons.”

**Troy**  
Violet’s ex-fiancé and a local football star. He bought the liquor and pills and insisted Violet drive that night, then abandoned her through the trial, faced no consequences, and moved on to a new girlfriend.

**Vicki Powell and Aunt Pammy**  
Violet’s older sister and aunt. Vicki picks Violet up from prison and settles her in Portland but tells her not to come home. Grieving Violet’s mother Eleanor, who died of cancer while Violet was in prison, they judge Violet harshly, and their rejection cuts deepest of all.

**Marnie and Baker**  
Marnie manages the bookstore where Frank works, and Baker is the young clerk who becomes his friend and occasional advisor on modern life. The store’s stray cat, Boris, is the first creature Violet tries to adopt.

**Mr. Flinders**  
The prison administrator who resents Book Club and the freedom of thought it gives the women. He bars Harriet from the prison over the gift of a hand-knitted bird.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/author.jpg)

Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist and playwright, and one of Maine’s most beloved storytellers. She was born into a large Irish-Catholic family of storytellers in the papermill town of Mexico, Maine, and fell in love with the written word at age four, writing letters to her oldest sister away at college.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/BOOKFI.jpg)

Like many of her readers, Wood bloomed late as a professional writer. Before her first novel appeared when she was forty, she worked as a nurse aide, an insurance clerk, a club singer, and, for eight years, a high school guidance counselor. She lives in Portland, Maine, the setting of How to Read a Book, with her husband, Dan Abbott.

##### Her Books

- ***Secret Language***, her first novel
- ***My Only Story,*** a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award
- ***Ernie’s Ark***, linked stories excerpted on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and chosen by several towns for their “One Book, One Community” read
- ***Any Bitter Thing***, an ABA bestseller and Book Sense Top Ten pick
- ***When We Were the Kennedys***, a memoir of her childhood in Mexico, Maine, after her father’s sudden death. It was a New England bestseller, an Oprah magazine summer-reading pick and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award
- ***The One-in-a-Million Boy*** (2016), the story of an eleven-year-old boy and a 104-year-old woman, published in more than 20 languages and winner of a Nautilus Gold Award
- ***How to Read a Book*** (Mariner Books, May 2024), a national bestseller
- ***The Pocket Muse*** (volumes 1 and 2) and Description, books for aspiring writers

##### Playwright and Award Winner

Wood’s first play, Papermaker, debuted at Portland Stage in 2015 and set the theater’s all-time attendance record. The Half-Light and Saint Dad followed, and the three are now collected in Three Plays by Monica Wood. Her short stories have won a Pushcart Prize, and her essays have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living and Parade. She has received the Sarah Josepha Hale Award for excellence in New England literary arts (2024), the Maine Humanities Council’s Constance Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities (2019) and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award (2016).

#####   
The Story The Story Behind How to Read a Book

The prison book club at the heart of the novel grew out of Wood’s own experience. Years ago she was invited to visit a volunteer-led book group in the women’s unit of the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, where the women were reading her book Ernie’s Ark. She later said that the moment she walked into the room she felt, “I completely belong here and I have to come back.” She went on to create a reading-and-writing program there called “Meet the Authors,” funded by the Maine Humanities Council, and she makes a point of not calling the women “inmates”: “I want them to think of themselves as more than inmates, more than whatever they’ve done wrong.”

Violet came first. Wood has described writing the first chapter, in Violet’s voice, in the middle of the night, before Harriet and Frank found their way into the story. Since publication, How to Read a Book has been named to the Texas Library Association’s Lariat List, was a finalist for the Westport Literary Prize, won the New England Society in the City of New York Book Award for fiction, was chosen for community reads including All CT Reads 2025 and Lake Oswego Reads, and has been published in Spain, the Czech Republic, the UK, Hungary, Greece, Germany and Croatia, among other countries.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/quotations.jpg)

> **“…in order for reading to become an exercise in empathy, it helps to think of all the characters in all the books as fellow creatures.”**  
> —Harriet Larson, guiding the women of Book Club, Chapter 1, p. 2  
>  
> Harriet’s whole philosophy of reading in one sentence, and a challenge the novel hands to us as we meet Violet, Frank and everyone else.

> **“I am a reader. I am intelligent. I have something worthy to contribute.”**  
> —The Book Club mantra Harriet teaches the women, p. 16  
>  
> Three short sentences that give incarcerated women an identity beyond their crimes. They are worth saying out loud at your own meeting.

> **“I feel the way I always feel in Book Club. The way I believe we all feel. Safe.”**  
> —Violet, describing Friday Book Club in prison, early in the novel  
>  
> Inside a place “designed to murder your privacy,” the book circle is the one room where the women can be themselves.

> **“Everything here is designed to murder your privacy.”**  
> —Violet, on life in prison, early in the novel  
>  
> One of Violet’s blunt, unforgettable observations about incarceration. Notice the word “murder” coming from a woman haunted by a death.

> **“I miss how Harriet was forever showing us how to read. How to look for shapes and layers. How to see that stories have a ‘meanwhile’—an important thing that’s happening while the rest of the story moves along.”**  
> —Violet, after her release, p. 62  
>  
> This introduces the idea of the “meanwhile,” which becomes the key to the whole novel and to Violet’s final epitaph.

> **“Books won’t solve my problems, Harriet.” / “No, but they give your problems perspective. They allow your problems to breathe.”**  
> —Violet and Harriet in conversation, middle of the novel  
>  
> A perfect summary of why books matter in this story. They don’t rescue anyone, but they make room to think and feel.

> **“People set their husbands afire, they nurse their dying mothers, they rob demented old men, they sing songs that bring listeners to tears, they kill a woman while drunk on love and 86-proof. The line between this and that, you and her, us and them. The line is thin.”**  
> —Harriet, reflecting on the women she has come to know, Harriet’s chapters  
>  
> Harriet refuses to divide the world into good people and bad people, and this passage dares the reader to do the same.

> **“Women left prison physically diminished, but in Violet that diminishment seemed of a different order, as if that part of God that is said to dwell in all creatures had flown from her, only to perch somewhere nearby, awaiting reentry.”**  
> —Harriet, on seeing Violet outside prison, Harriet’s chapters  
>  
> A bird image long before the parrots appear. Violet’s spirit has flown off and is waiting to come back, just as she is waiting to reenter the world.

> **“We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done. Or, more exactly, we are both the best thing and the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are all of it, all at once, all the time.”**  
> —Harriet, to Violet, p. 152  
>  
> Perhaps the central idea of the novel and a gift to anyone who has ever been defined by a single mistake.

> **“Apologies require acceptance, so I thank you. But as I understand it, forgiveness flows in one direction only.”**  
> —Frank, to Violet, handing back the bookends, p. 177  
>  
> Frank won’t take forgiveness from Violet. Forgiveness is his to give, not hers. It is one of the most debated lines in the book.

> **“If you’ve never happened upon a man whose wife died because of you but finds a way to shine with mercy, I’m sorry.”**  
> —Violet, on Frank, second half of the novel  
>  
> Violet’s wonder at Frank’s grace. She feels sorry for anyone who has never been on the receiving end of such mercy.

> **“Retired people were often thought to be lonely, but it wasn’t that. It was the feeling of uselessness, of being done with it all.”**  
> —Harriet, after being barred from the prison, Harriet’s chapters  
>  
> A line many seasoned readers will recognize. Losing Book Club costs Harriet her sense of purpose as much as her friends.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/historical.jpg)

***How to Read a Book*** is a contemporary novel, but it is grounded in very real places, programs and science. Knowing a little of the background makes the story richer, and it gives your group plenty to talk about.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/woman-in-prison-reading-1.jpg)

##### The Real Prison Book Club

Harriet’s Friday Book Club is fiction, but it is drawn from life. Monica Wood spent years leading reading and writing sessions in the women’s unit of the Maine Correctional Center in Windham, about twenty miles from Portland. In a 2013 radio interview she described a unit of about 80 women inside a prison holding roughly 600 people, most of them men.

With funding from the Maine Humanities Council, Wood started a program called “Meet the Authors,” bringing in fellow Maine writers, including science writer Hannah Holmes and children’s author Amy MacDonald, to talk books with the women. The details that ring so true in the novel (the blue uniforms, the boredom, the guard at the door, the pure joy of a good discussion) come from that experience, not from research.

##### Reading Behind Bars: A Short History

The idea that literature can change lives in the justice system has a real history. In the fall of 1991, English professor Robert Waxler and Massachusetts District Court Judge Robert Kane started Changing Lives Through Literature at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Eight men with 148 convictions among them were sentenced to probation instead of prison on one condition: they had to complete a twelve-week modern American literature seminar. The judge and a probation officer sat at the table as equals, reading novels like Jack London’s The Sea Wolf and James Dickey’s Deliverance. The program spread to other states and has served women as well as men.

More recently, poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts, who was sentenced to nine years in prison at age sixteen and says books saved his life, founded Freedom Reads in 2020\. The nonprofit installs handcrafted, 500-book “Freedom Libraries” directly inside prison housing units. In March 2023 it opened eight of them in Windham, Maine, including one at the Maine Correctional Women’s Center, the real-life counterpart of Violet’s prison.

Researchers caution that it is hard to prove that reading alone reduces reoffending. But Harriet would say that isn’t the point. Book Club gives the women dignity, a voice, and the chance to be “readers, not embezzlers, not murderers.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/women-in-prison-1.jpg)

##### Women in Prison

Violet, Dawna-Lynn and the Book Club women belong to one of the fastest-growing prison populations in America. According to The Sentencing Project, the number of incarcerated women in the United States rose by more than 585 percent between 1980 and 2022, from 26,326 to 180,684\. Many incarcerated women have histories of abuse and trauma, and many are mothers. Release brings its own trials, as Violet discovers: finding housing and work with a record, rebuilding family ties, and facing a community that may never forgive.

##### Alex the Parrot and the Science of Bird Brains

Dr. Petrov’s lab is fictional, but it echoes one of the most famous animal studies ever done. In 1977 scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg bought a year-old African grey parrot from a Chicago pet store and named him Alex. Over three decades of work, Alex learned more than 100 vocal labels for objects, colors and materials, could count sets of objects up to six, and even developed a zero-like concept. His work overturned the old insult “bird brain.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/spoon-river.jpg)

##### The Books the Women Read

Harriet’s reading list is a story in itself. Each title echoes something in the novel:

- ***Spoon River Anthology*** (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters is a collection of free-verse poems in which the dead of a small Illinois town speak their own epitaphs, 212 characters in all. The poems first appeared in 1914 in the St. Louis journal Reedy’s Mirror under the pen name “Webster Ford.” Elmer Karr, the young murderer whom the town forgives, moves Violet deeply, and the book inspires her own closing epitaph.
- **Ethan Frome** (1911) by Edith Wharton is a bleak tale of a New England farmer trapped by duty, poverty and a terrible winter sledding “accident.” The women see Ethan as punished by fate, a feeling some of them know well.
- ***Franny and Zooey*** (1961) by J. D. Salinger, two linked stories about the Glass family, is the book Harriet assigns as “for people with some life behind them,” unlike The Catcher in the Rye, which she calls a book “for innocents.”
- **Maya Angelou’s poetry**, including “Phenomenal Woman” from And Still I Rise (1978), wins the women over during their poetry season. They declare Angelou the greatest poet of all time. Her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) takes its title from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Sympathy,” a fitting echo for a book full of caged birds.

##### Reading How to Read a Book

Knowing this background deepens the novel’s central question. Harriet’s women are not statistics; they are readers. And Violet’s story, like every epitaph in Spoon River, insists that a life is bigger than its worst moment. For discussion, consider: if a book club can change a life inside prison, what might it be changing in yours?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/discussion.jpg)

1. The novel’s title sounds like an instruction manual. By the last page, what do you think Monica Wood is teaching us about how to read a book, and about how to read this particular book?
2. Harriet’s mantra for the women is “I am a reader. I am intelligent. I have something worthy to contribute.” Why do these words matter so much to women in prison? Have you ever needed to hear something like that yourself?
3. Violet calls Lorraine Daigle her “Reason,” and the women have an unspoken rule never to discuss their Reasons. Why do you think that rule exists? What does it protect, and what does it cost them?
4. Harriet says that in order for reading to become an exercise in empathy, it helps to think of all characters as “fellow creatures.” Which character in this novel was hardest for you to see as a fellow creature, and did that change?
5. The story is told by three narrators: Violet in first person, and Harriet and Frank in third person. Why might Wood have given Violet alone the “I”? Whose chapters did you look forward to most?
6. An older Violet frames the story from the end of her life. Did knowing that she lived a long life change the way you read her struggles? Did it make the story more hopeful or more heartbreaking?
7. The Book Club women prefer the classics (Ethan Frome, Franny and Zooey, Spoon River Anthology) to contemporary “inspirational” novels about people who overcome everything. Why do you think older books spoke to them more?
8. Frank feels something like relief when Lorraine dies, and he is ashamed of it. How did learning the truth about the Daigles’ marriage change your view of Frank, and of Lorraine?
9. Frank chooses not to tell Kristy about her mother’s affair. Is his silence an act of love, cowardice, or both? Would you have told her?
10. When Frank sees Violet in the bookstore, he “plummets into the ditch of memory” and falls from the ladder. What does this scene show us about grief and trauma, and how quickly they can ambush us?
11. Frank tells Violet: “Apologies require acceptance, so I thank you. But as I understand it, forgiveness flows in one direction only.” What do you think he means? Is it harder to forgive, or to accept forgiveness?
12. Violet’s family and church in Abbott Falls cannot forgive her, yet Frank, the person she wronged most, can. Why do you think the people closest to her find forgiveness hardest?
13. Harriet tells Violet, “We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done.” Do you agree? How do Violet, Frank and Harriet each prove or test this idea?
14. Troy bought the liquor and pills and insisted Violet drive, yet he faced no consequences. How did you feel about the way responsibility was divided? Does knowing about Troy change how you judge Violet?
15. Harriet briefly wonders whether Troy was really driving and Violet took the blame. Why do you think she wanted that to be true? Did you?
16. Harriet says the line between “this and that, you and her, us and them” is thin. How did this novel affect the way you think about people who are incarcerated or returning home from prison?
17. Violet faces closed doors everywhere after her release: housing, jobs, family, church. Which of these struggles surprised you most? What could a community do to make reentry easier?
18. Harriet has said yes to everyone her whole life and vowed to say yes only for herself. How does Book Club, and later Frank, fit into that vow?
19. Harriet says retired people aren’t so much lonely as they feel useless, “done with it all.” Did that ring true for you? How do Harriet and Frank each find new purpose?
20. Frank and Harriet fall in love in their sixties. How did you feel about their romance? What does the novel say about love, desire and starting over later in life?
21. Violet’s affair with Misha is very different from Harriet and Frank’s relationship. What do you think Violet needed from Misha? Why is she drawn to him even when she knows better?
22. The parrots, especially overlooked Ollie and star pupil Charlotte, play a big role in Violet’s healing. What do the birds give Violet that people cannot? Why do you think she takes Ollie with her?
23. Harriet is barred from the prison for accepting a hand-knitted bird. Was the rule fair? What does this episode say about power, and about who gets to decide what is “good” for the women?
24. Books travel through this novel as gifts: the paperbacks Violet keeps under her bed, Spoon River Anthology tumbling off a shelf, Frank’s bookends. What role does a physical book, or a book-related object, play in bringing people together?
25. Violet loves the Spoon River poem of Elmer Karr, the murderer whom his whole town forgave. Why does this epitaph hit her so hard? Is a community’s forgiveness different from one person’s?
26. Harriet teaches the women that stories have a “meanwhile,” an important thing happening while the rest of the story moves along. What is the “meanwhile” of this novel? Of your own life?
27. Violet’s epitaph reads: “My name was Violet Powell. I took a life. I lived and died. Meanwhile, I was loved.” How did you feel when you reached these words? What would your own one-line epitaph say?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/podcasts.jpg)

Want to hear more from Monica Wood? These conversations and reviews make perfect listening before or after your meeting.

**Maine Calling (Maine Public Radio): “Monica Wood”**  
May 6, 2024  
Monica Wood talks with Maine Public about her new novel, How to Read a Book, and what she is working on next, a hometown conversation on Maine’s statewide call-in show.  
Link: [https://www.mainepublic.org/show/maine-calling/2024-05-06/monica-wood](https://www.mainepublic.org/show/maine-calling/2024-05-06/monica-wood?ref=readerswithwrinkles.com)

**Likely Stories (KWBU Public Radio): “How to Read a Book”**  
December 5, 2024  
Reviewer Diane Kemper reflects on the novel’s central question: given the chance, could you forgive the person who brought you the greatest heartache?  
Link: [https://www.kwbu.org/podcast/likely-stories/2024-12-05/likely-stories-how-to-read-a-book](https://www.kwbu.org/podcast/likely-stories/2024-12-05/likely-stories-how-to-read-a-book?ref=readerswithwrinkles.com)

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***How to Read a Book*** is a novel of second chances, so your meeting should feel like the coziest, kindest room in Portland: part independent bookstore, part retired English teacher’s living room, with a touch of the parrot lab. Think plum and violet, soft parrot grey with a flash of red, pine green and cream. None of these ideas cost much, and most use what you already own.

***The Friday Book Club Circle***  
Arrange mismatched chairs in a circle, just as Harriet’s women sat in prison, so that everyone faces everyone else and no one sits at the “head.” Place a paperback, a small notebook and a pen on each seat. It quietly sets the tone: in this room, everyone is a reader with something worthy to contribute.

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**Pots of Violets in Teacups**  
Violet’s name is your flower. Tuck inexpensive African violets from the grocery store into mismatched thrifted teacups and line them along the windowsill or down the table. Send one home with each guest as a little “second chance” to nurture.

**The Open Birdcage Centerpiece**  
Fill a vintage or dollar-store birdcage with old books, trailing ivy and a few violets, and leave the door wide open. It nods to Ollie’s escape from the lab, to the women “caged” inside, and to Maya Angelou’s caged bird. Scatter a few grey and red craft feathers around the base.

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**Frank’s Bookends**  
Borrow any pair of bookends, or make a rustic set from two bricks or chunks of granite, and use them to hold a row of the books mentioned in the novel: Ethan Frome, Franny and Zooey, Spoon River Anthology and a Maya Angelou collection. Add a small pink stone in honor of “Pinky,” Frank’s favorite pink granite.

**The Bookstore Staff-Pick Table**  
Recreate the Portland bookstore where the three main characters collide. Stack a few favorite novels on a side table with handwritten kraft “staff pick” cards clipped to them, and invite each member to bring one book to add a card to. A stuffed or ceramic cat curled beside the stack stands in for Boris, the store cat.

**Spoon River Epitaph Place Cards**  
SCut simple arched “headstones” from grey cardstock and write each guest’s name on the front. On the back, write a short line from the novel or leave it blank for the epitaph icebreaker. Gentle, not spooky, they honor the book that inspires Violet’s final words.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/knitted-birds.jpg)

**Knitted Birds**  
The hand-knitted bird the women give Harriet costs her Book Club, but it is a gift of love. If anyone in your group knits or crochets, ask for a few small grey birds with red tails. If not, felt birds from a craft store work beautifully perched among books and yarn.

**A Coastal Maine Table**  
Bring Portland to your table with pine branches, smooth grey beach stones, mason-jar candles, a small lighthouse figurine and a faded lobster buoy if you can find one. It is a simple, earthy nod to Monica Wood’s home state and the novel’s setting.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/reading-mantra.jpg)

**The Mantra Banner**  
Print or hand-letter Harriet’s mantra, “I am a reader. I am intelligent. I have something worthy to contribute,” on a banner or poster near the entrance (see the printable decorations). Invite everyone to read it aloud together to open the meeting.

**Harriet’s Typed Handouts**  
Harriet is famous for her methodical, typed discussion questions. Print your questions on cream paper, roll each one like a scroll and tie it with plum ribbon. Members can pull a question from a basket when the conversation needs a nudge.

**Library Card Name Tags**  
Violet’s first step toward a new life is a library card. Make name tags that look like old-fashioned library checkout cards, with a line for each member’s name and a second line for “Currently reading.”

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- **Icebreaker: Write Your Own Epitaph (**Activity in printable kit)
- **Icebreaker: Book Club Fact or Fiction Quiz** (In printable kit)
- **Icebreaker: Bookends Match-Up** (In printable kit)
- **Icebreaker: Harriet’s Crossover Questions** (In printable kit)

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Food in ***How to Read a Book*** is comfort and kindness: Harriet feeding Violet on her first terrible day, Frank scrambling eggs for Harriet on hers. This menu is pure Maine comfort, simple enough to make ahead so the host can sit down and talk.

##### APPETIZERS

**The Meanwhile Board**  
A generous cheese board with sharp Maine cheddar, crackers, grapes, wild blueberries, honey and nuts. Everyone can nibble “meanwhile,” while the real story unfolds around the table.

**Ollie’s Seed and Nut Crunch**  
A spiced roasted mix of almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries, fit for an African grey, and irresistible to people. Serve it in small bowls around the room.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/egg-bites.jpg)

**Frank’s Comfort Egg Bites**  
Frank makes Harriet scrambled eggs on the night she loses Book Club. These mini baked frittatas with cheddar and chives can be made in a muffin tin a day ahead and served warm or at room temperature.

##### MAIN ENTREES

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**Second-Chance Lobster Rolls**  
The classic Portland, Maine, lunch: sweet lobster lightly dressed and piled into toasted, buttered split-top buns. Shrimp or crab make a budget-friendly second chance. Recipe included.

**Spoon River Chicken and Dumplings**  
A pot of creamy chicken stew topped with fluffy dumplings, the kind of old-fashioned small-town supper that could have been served at any table in Spoon River.

**The Book Lady’s Baked Mac and Cheese**  
Harriet’s idea of a welcome-home meal: a bubbling dish of macaroni and cheese with a crisp buttery crumb topping. It feeds a crowd and reheats beautifully.

##### DESSERTS

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**Abbott Falls Whoopie Pies**  
Two soft chocolate cakes sandwiching a fluffy marshmallow filling. The whoopie pie is Maine’s official state treat and a taste of the hometown Violet can’t go back to. Recipe included.

**Wild Blueberry Second-Helping Cobbler**  
Maine wild blueberries baked under a golden biscuit topping and served warm with vanilla ice cream. Everyone deserves a second helping.

**Shrinking Violet Shortbread**  
Buttery lavender shortbread cookies topped with candied violets or a dusting of purple sugar, as delicate and surprisingly strong as their namesake.

##### BEVERAGES

**A Full-Bodied Red**  
In Harriet’s own words, there is no occasion “that could not be vastly improved by a full-bodied red.” Choose a Cabernet, Malbec or Zinfandel and let the conversation breathe.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/lemonade.jpg)

**Violet’s Color-Changing Lemonade**  
A zero-proof showstopper: deep blue butterfly pea flower tea turns violet before your eyes when lemonade is poured in, a little transformation in a glass. Recipe included.

**Harriet’s Saucepan Tea**  
With no kettle in Violet’s bare apartment, Harriet makes tea in a saucepan. Simmer black tea with milk, cinnamon, cardamom and a touch of honey for a cozy spiced chai.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/94/9a/949a9f7d-7bf4-49c9-8093-9a1af92098bf/content/images/2026/10/BOOKFI-1.jpg) 

#### Get Monica Wood Books

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#### **How to Read a Book* printable BOOK CLUB KIT

The RWW book club kits provide everything you need to organize a great meeting with insightful discussions. These resources simplify book club preparation with character lists, book quotes, refreshment suggestions, recipes, and carefully prepared book club questions!

[Download how to Read a Book printable BOOK CLUB KIT here](https://readerswithwrinkles.gumroad.com/l/otvffl?ref=readerswithwrinkles.com)