Bookclub Dues - August 2025

Event Date is August 26th at 6:30PM! 

Bookends is now closed on Tuesdays--to non bookclub members ;) . Don't be alarmed if you arrive to a "closed" sign - we're either in there or almost there to set up for bookclub!

There are two options for bookclub dues. Both will buy your membership for the month's meeting, which will include drinks, snacks, and a special gift or activity tied to the book's theme. The $40 option will include a physical copy of the book which can be picked up at our store when it arrives. There is also a $25 option that does not include a copy of the book (for all of our audiobook and ebook readers). 

"Atmosphere" by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.