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Book Discussions celebrating 16 years of literary repartee. In Person & Online Book Discussions Calendar below.

What is Chapter Endnotes?

Join our engaging book discussions as a monthly or annual member. Gift a membership to a friends or family member. Discover what we're reading. Please join us! 

Stacey Golding
Facilitator, Chapter Endnotes

Why Join Chapter Endnotes Book Discussions?

  • Amazing literary exploration and analysis

  • Historical context and author profiles

  • Thought-provoking questions and great conversation

  • Selection of membership options

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What are people saying

"Our book club is a literary delight. 
Each month, Stacey brings author research, content evaluation and invigorating book discussions to a lovely group of readers.”
-Desiree Bailey, San Marco Books and More

“Thank for a most extraordinary day!!!! Your group is fantastic!!!”

“Your presentation on your book and its legacy were masterful.”

“It’s like a college course. No, it’s more than that!

“Doesn’t matter if I loved the book or not. I love the discussion.”

“I love learning about the author, the context and
all the details presented. Amazing.”

Chapter Endnotes Book Club
at San Marco Books and More
What could be better than discussing books in a bookstore?! 

Join Us at San Marco Books and More in the heart of historic San Marco in Jacksonville, Florida.

When you join Chapter Endnotes, your membership and a portion your book(s)purchase benefit Searching For Identity, a non-profit that offers dynamic programs to educate and unite diverse communities, encouraging public discourse and understanding.

Mention Chapter Endnotes
when you check out electronically
or in-person.

Book purchases are directed to the San Marco Books and More website. 

Chapter Endnotes Book Club Calendar

  • Discussions are available in person and online.

  • We have two seasons:
    Sept.-Dec. and Feb.-May

  • Select an annual or monthly membership to fit you schedule

  • Once you register for one of the book club discussions, then purchase the book

  • Have a question? Book suggestion? Send along to: books@chapterendnotes.com

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Apr
9

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

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at San Marco Books and More

6:30 PM EST

OR

Register | Online
Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Join us to discuss:
Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf

Book Summary:
A stunning new edition of Virginia Woolf's engulfing portrait of one day in a woman's life, featuring a new foreword by Jenny Offill, the New York Times bestselling author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." It's one of the most famous opening lines in literature, that of Virginia Woolf's beloved masterpiece of time, memory, and the city. In the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic, Clarissa Dalloway, elegant and vivacious, is preparing for a party and remembering those she once loved. In another part of London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Their days interweave and their lives converge as the party reaches its glittering climax. In a novel in which she perfects the interior monologue and recapitulates the life cycle in the hours of the day, from first light to the dark of night, Woolf achieves an uncanny simulacrum of consciousness, bringing past, present, and future together, and recording, impression by impression, minute by minute, the feel of life itself.

This edition is collated from all known proofs, manuscripts, and impressions to reflect the author's intentions, and includes a catalog of emendations, an illuminating introduction and endnotes by the distinguished feminist critic Elaine Showalter, and a map of Mrs. Dalloway's London.

For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
May
14

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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6:30 PM EST

OR

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Join us to discuss:
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Book Summary:
*NOW AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER*

*OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD*

*AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*

If you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a caf that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the caf in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

Meet more wonderful characters in the next captivating novel in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, Before We Say Goodbye, releasing November 14, 2023

Read the rest of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series:

Tales from the Cafe

Before Your Memory Fades

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The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan
Mar
12

The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan

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at San Marco Books and More

6:30 PM EST

OR

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Join us to discuss:
The Last Castle
by Denise Kiernan

Book Summary:
A New York Times bestseller with an "engaging narrative and array of detail” (The Wall Street Journal), the “intimate and sweeping” (Raleigh News & Observer) untold, true story behind the Biltmore Estate—the largest, grandest private residence in North America, which has seen more than 120 years of history pass by its front door.

The story of Biltmore spans World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and generations of the famous Vanderbilt family, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.

Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York’s best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House.

Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness. He summoned the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to tame the grounds, collaborated with celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a 175,000-square-foot chateau, filled it with priceless art and antiques, and erected a charming village beyond the gates. Newlywed Edith was now mistress of an estate nearly three times the size of Washington, DC and benefactress of the village and surrounding rural area. When fortunes shifted and changing times threatened her family, her home, and her community, it was up to Edith to save Biltmore—and secure the future of the region and her husband’s legacy.

This is the fascinating, “soaring and gorgeous” (Karen Abbott) story of how the largest house in America flourished, faltered, and ultimately endured to this day.

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The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Feb
13

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

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6:30 PM EST

OR

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Join us to discuss:
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin

Book Summary:
Kate Chopin's groundbreaking depiction of a woman who dares to defy the expectations of society in the pursuit of her desire

When The Awakening was first published in 1899, charges of sordidness and immorality seemed to consign it into obscurity and irreparably damage its author's reputation. But a century after her death, it is widely regarded as Kate Chopin's great achievement. Through careful, subtle changes of style, Chopin shows the transformation of Edna Pontellier, a young wife and mother, who - with tragic consequences - refuses to be caged by married and domestic life, and claims for herself moral and erotic freedom.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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The Crucible by Arthur Miller
Dec
12

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

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at San Marco Books and More

6:30 PM EST

OR

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Join us to discuss:
The Crucible
by Arthur Miller

Book Summary:
A haunting examination of groupthink and mass hysteria in a rural community

A Penguin Classic

"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria.

In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence.

Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing: "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
Nov
14

Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

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6:30 PM EST

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

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Rules for Visiting
by Jessica Francis Kane

Book Summary:
“An elegant and deeply moving meditation on friendship, family, and life on earth. Rules for Visiting is a wonderful novel.” —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven

The national bestseller and an Indie Next List pick

Name a Best Book of the Year by O Magazine • Good Housekeeping • Real Simple • Vulture • Chicago Tribune

Named a Best Book of the Summer by The Today Show • Good Morning America • Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Southern Living

Shortlisted for the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize

Long-listed for the 2020 Tournament of Books

Dry, witty, and unapologetic, May Attaway loves literature and her work as a botanist for the university in her hometown. More at home with plants than people, May begins to suspect she isn’t very good at friendship and wonders if it’s possible to improve with practice. Granted some leave from her job, she sets out on a journey to spend time with four long-neglected friends.

Smart, funny, and full of compassion, Rules for Visiting is the story of a search for friendship in the digital age, a singular look at the way we stay in touch. While May travels, she studies her friends’ lives and begins to confront the pain of her own.

With simplicity and honesty, Jessica Francis Kane has crafted an exquisite story about a woman trying to find a new way to be in the world. This nourishing book, with its beautiful contemplation of travel, trees, family, and friendship, is the perfect antidote to our chaotic times.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Oct
10

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

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6:30 PM EST

OR

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Book Club Discussion

11:00 AM EST

Purchase the Book

Join us to discuss:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
by J.K. Rowling

Book Summary:
Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility.

All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley - a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry's room is a tiny closet at the foot of the stairs, and he hasn't had a birthday party in eleven years.

But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to an incredible place that Harry - and anyone who reads about him - will find unforgettable.

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