A Programming Update for April & May

Plus: We have a bracket winner!

Apr 09, 2024

“Orchard, Springtime” by Vincent Van Gogh (1888)

Hello friends,

Spring has sprung (as they say) which seems to mean it’s either pouring down rain or absolutely gorgeous here in North Carolina. It also means flowers are blooming, pollen is everywhere, and brackets (literary and otherwise) are crowning champions. (More on that below.) Here at Goldberry Books we’re in the middle of our annual, month-long, Charlotte-metro indie bookstore crawl while Bethany is hard at work finishing up Lumen, our new arts-appreciation curriculum. Meanwhile, the reading never ends, which is the way it ought to be. So below you’ll find a programming update for the next several weeks. Please note: there is a key change in the schedule of our monthly mystery series.

But first . . .

We have a winner!

The champion of our 2024 Close Reads literary bracket is the opening line of C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Congratulations to Clive Staples himself, to . . . Eustace(?), and to all who voted for it. That was a very fun bracket; thanks for making it so.

Upcoming Schedules

Note: These dates are the days the episodes will drop, not when they will be recorded.

Schedule for Trust

April 22: Part 1
April 29: Part 2
May 6: Part 3
May 13: Part 4
May 20: Q&A Episode

Schedule for The Summer Book

May 27: Through the chapter called “The Tent”
June 3: To the end
June 10: Q&A Episode

Schedule for Kristin Lavransdatter book 3, The Cross

We have two more episodes left on book two, but for those who are ready to get ahead:

May 10: Part 1, chapters 1-3
May 24: Part 1, chapters 4-6
June 7: Part 2, chapters 1-4
June 21: Part 2, chapters 5-8
July 5: Part 3, chapters 1-4
July 19: Part 3, chapters 5-7
August 2: Q&A Episode

Live poetry hour for April

Our next live poetry hour for CRHQ subscribers will take place on Thursday, April 18. We will be discussing “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and comparing it to Mary Oliver’s own poem called “Spring.”

As always, this conversation will take place on Zoom and the link will be sent to subscribers that morning. These have been really lovely conversations and I hope you’ll plan to join us!

Monthly Mysteries

Changes are afoot! We’ve really been enjoying our monthly discussions on classic mystery novels and the more we read the whole project has taken shape in such a way that leads me to conclude that Double Indemnity is not a good fit for the particular list. First of all, it doesn’t include a detective, which makes it a rather dramatic outlier. Second, it’s much darker than the other books on the list. So here’s the plan, as reflected in the schedule below. We’re going to move The Franchise Affair up to this month, then move Death of Jezebel to May, and then insert Ross Macdonald’s The Chill into the October slot. This will allow us to continue our discussions on great detectives, while keeping the book somewhat more tonally consistent. I hope this doesn’t cause too much consternation. Thanks for bearing with us, and reading along!

February: Mysterious Affair at Styles (early Agatha Christie)
March: Post after Post-Mortem (ECR Lorac)
April: The Franchise Affair (Josephine Tey)
May: Death of Jezebel (Christianna Brand)
June: 2 Father Brown stories (GK Chesterton)
July: The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett) + movie
August: Jumping Jenny (Anthony Berkley)
September: The Case of the Gilded Fly (Edmund Crispin)
October: The Chill (Ross Macdonald)
November: A Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (later Agatha Christie)
December: The White Priory Murders (Carter Dickson)

Past episodes

Strong Poison (Dorothy Sayers) - Listen now
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie) - Listen now
Post After Post-Mortem (E. C. R. Lorac) - Listen now

Should you, hypothetically, wish to buy any of these titles through Goldberry, you can do so here at Bookshop.org.