BPW BOOK CLUB

JuLY 29, 2026 at 6:00 p.m.

BPW MEMBERS ONLY

Our Book Club Mission: This book club will focus on stories written by women, about women, and for women. Our aim is to create a space where pages come alive with conversation, where every chapter sparks reflection, and where words become tools for growth, empathy, and action.

• We will select a book that either highlights women’s journeys, is authored by women, or offers wisdom and guidance for women in all walks of life.
• Selections will span genres—memoir, fiction, self-development, and beyond—ensuring our reading list is as diverse and dynamic as the women in our group.
• We have developed a list of suggestions provided by previous Book Club members and we all agreed these are great books. If you have books you’d like to suggest we add to this list, please email BPW/FL and we can add to the master list.
• Our gatherings will foster thoughtful discussion, mutual encouragement, and the sharing of personal insights, forging bonds among members and igniting new perspectives.
• Please mark your calendar for Wednesday, July 29 from 6-7 pm.
• For our next reading: Atmosphere

July Book:

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, creating complex protagonists, and telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love—this time among the stars.