Happy Hour Books
An opportunity to discuss faith, life and theology while enjoying a beverage and some comradery.
The Happy Hour Book Group usually meets at 5pm once a month midweek at a time convenient to participants.
Our meeting place has been the Rose & Crown pub in Palo Alto or on the front patio at church (where it’s bring your own beverage to share). Contact Pastor Bernt for details.
Readings tend to be short and in-depth books or essays. Sometimes we don’t get a chance to finish the reading, but we come anyway to enjoy a meaningful conversation while sipping a favorite beverage.
Current reading, Summer 2026: a funny, short novel by one of our most famous local authors: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck. It’s about impoverished people living near Monterey. We’ll talk about California lifestyles, social class and spiritual themes. Contact Pastor Bernt if you’d like to join the discussion, or need a copy of the book.
Some of the authors and books we’ve read in the past:
- Pope Leo’s “Apostolic Exhortation on Love for the Poor.”
- Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse, by Miroslav Volf.
- Nine Billion Turing Tests, on A.I. and the Silicon Valley future, by FLC member and writer Chris Willrich.
- Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, by Elizabeth Oldfield.
- Attention economy with Burkemann, Odell, Newport.
- Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
- Low Anthropology by David Zahl.
- When in Romans by Beverly Gaventa.
- On Christian Freedom and Commentary on the Magnificat by Martin Luther
- Who is God? and Jesus: A Very Short Introduction by Richard Bauckham
