Rainy Day Readers at St. Paul's Church
Our Rainy Day Readers book club was started in 2014 at St. Paul's Church. We meet monthly to enjoy a lively discussion on a thought-provoking range of books from classics to new releases, from non-fiction to fiction, from Sonoma County to the world, uncovering historical, social, and theological insights with every read.
We invite you to join us! To view upcoming featured books, and the time and location of our next gathering, view our calendar here. Or peruse the list of books we've enjoyed listed below to find your next read.
Current Book Selection
Our selection for our November 2025 gathering is The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, the same author who wrote the RDR favorite, Cutting for Stone.
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret
The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
This is a long book but one to delve into and immerse yourself!
The book is available at the Library, at Levin & Co, as well as Amazon in all formats. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, Nov 4th at 7:00 pm. If you would like to host please let us know and we recommend you get an early start on this one!
Books We've Enjoyed
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
A Story Like the Wind, Laurens Van Der Post
A Tale For the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
An Unfinished Love Story, Doris Kerns Goodwin
At the Water’s Edge, Sara Gruen
Becoming, Michelle Obama
Born A Crime, Trevor Noah
Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese
Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, Nina Tottenberg
Dusty Roads: Meet the Hidden Figure Who Really Ignited the Women's Movement, Elaine Rock
Educated, Tara Westover
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee Shetterly
Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance
Historical Travels Through Sonoma County, John Crevelli (TBA)
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, Kristin Kobes du Mez
James, Percival Everett
Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
Lying Awake, Mark Salzman
News of the World, Paulette Jiles
Our Southern Home, Waights Taylor Jr.
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
Polio & Me, Ken Dalton
Remarkably Bright Breatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo
Sunflowers, Sheramy Bundrick
Tattoos on the Heart, Greg Boyle
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
The Awakened Brain, Lisa Miller, PhD
The Book of Hope, Dr. Jane Goodall
The Book of Joy, Bishop Desmond Tutu & the Dalai Lama
The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Kim Michele Richardson
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
The Dearly Beloved, Cara Wall
The Dog That Talked to God, Jim Kraus
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
The Last Bus to Wisdom, Ivan Doig
The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan
The Library Book, Susan Orlean
The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler
The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
The Reason I Jump, Naoki Higashida
The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old, Hendrik Groen
The Soul of an Octopus, Sy Montgomery
The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage, Richard Rohr
The Woman Behind the Collar, Joy Carroll Wallis
The Women, Kristin Hannah
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Under the Overpass : A Journey of Faith on the Streets of America, Mike Yankowski
When God Shows Up, Craig Douglas Claudin
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Zealot, Reza Aslan
Updated on September 4, 2025
