The Riverbend Readers Book Club

For Riverbend Readers Book Club members, please scroll down to find out what your current and next book club books are. You will also find a calendar of dates and the list of books that you've read over the past year. For guests, please feel free to peruse the Riverbend Readers page, and fill out an Expression of Interest form if you would like to join the Riverbend Readers waiting list.

Keep in mind that if you live outside Brisbane and cannot physically attend our book clubs, you can still read the books! Sign up for our Book of the Month program and receive the latest offering from Riverbend Readers.

TO JOIN, CHOOSE YOUR PREFERED SESSION TIME BELOW!

BOOKCLUB DATES FOR 2026

Mondays - 6pm and 7:30pm | Tuesdays - 10am, 6pm, and 7:30pm | Wednesdays - 10am, 1pm, 6pm, and 7:30pm | Thursdays - 6pm and 7:30pm | Sundays 2pm

2026 CALENDAR

Reading for FEBRUARY

Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati's life both as a woman and a writer.

Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy's first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as "my shelter and my storm."  

"Heart-smashed" by her mother Mary's death in September 2022 yet puzzled and "more than a little ashamed" by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, "not because I didn't love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her." And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author's journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.

With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace -- a memoir like no other.

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