Treat Your Shelf Book Club

Treat Your Shelf is a new adult book club hosted by the Salt Lake City Public Library, and it kicks off on Monday, October 26, at the Main Branch (210 East 400 South). The whole thing is built around a pretty simple formula: show up on a Monday evening, grab a snack, pick up your copy of next month's book, and spend the session reading and discussing a new title together. The library pitches it as much as a social project as a literary one, aimed at helping people make friends as much as read.

That social side is baked into the format. Instead of everyone coming in having already finished the book on their own, you're reading and talking through it in the room. At each meeting, you'll get your copy of the following month's book to take home, so you're always one step ahead. To get your copy, you'll need an active library card in good standing.

The reading schedule for the first four months is already set. The first session on October 26 focuses on Educated by Tara Westover. After that, the club moves to A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers on November 23, Solito by Javier Zamora on December 28, and The Last to See Me by Mylene Dressler on January 25. It's a wide-ranging lineup—a memoir of a survivalist upbringing, a hopeful sci-fi novella, a migrant's journey, and a mystery—so there's a bit of everything to work through over the winter.

Meetings run from 6:00 to 7:30 PM on Monday nights at the Main Branch, and the first one is Monday, October 26.