Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club Community Manager Ginger Horton put this nonfiction collection of cocktail party length stories on my radar. This feels like a series of the author chats that we do over in Book Club all the time. Ginger described this as the book form of that question: "Who would you invite to your imaginary dinner party?" That's almost what Alissa Wilkinson is answering in this collection and her guest list is exquisite. The subtitle's reference to "revolutionary women" includes names I expected to find, like Laurie Colwin, but also so many others—Edna Lewis, Hannah Arendt, Alice B. Toklas, Maya Angelou, and many more mentions besides as these women rub shoulders with all kinds of people in their places and times. I was especially not expecting to see Octavia Butler. If a small and short deep dive is possible, that's what she's doing in these pages. There's a recipe at the end of each chapter that's indicative of each woman's life and work. What she's talking about here is how she says these are women with strong opinions, but also generous hearts and who make strong arguments because they believe in them, but always do it with grace. I felt like I was in such good hands at her dinner table. I have to warn you slash encourage you that you could cobble together quite the reading list from the suggestions in these pages if you wanted to. It feels like the best kinds of literary conversations.

From the publisher: "Joan Didion opened The White Album (1979) with what would become one of the most iconic lines in American literature: 'We tell ourselves stories in order to live.' Today, this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, used as a battle cry for artists and writers. In truth, Didion was describing something much less rosy: our human tendency to manufacture delusions that might ward away our anxieties when society seems to spin off its axis. In this riveting cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion’s influence through the lens of American mythmaking. We Tell Ourselves Stories eloquently traces Didion’s journey from New York to her arrival in Hollywood as a screenwriter at the twilight of the old studio system. She paid the bills writing movie scripts like A Star Is Born, while her books propelled her to celestial heights of fame.More than a portrait of a writer, We Tell Ourselves Stories shines a new light on a legacy whose impact will be felt for generations."