Loyal Blues Book Club with Evviva

  • Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, Vice Provost for University Libraries hosts our virtual book club exclusively for Loyal Blues.

    You’ll have the opportunity to connect with alumni and friends, all while having an expert educator guide you through several books annually.

    Our Winter Book

    Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

    Evviva Weintraub Lajoie, Vice Provost for University Libraries.

    Evviva Weintraub Lajoie, Vice Provost for University Libraries

    As we turn the page into a new year, I'm delighted to read Holding On Upside Down with our community of Loyal Blues. Marianne Moore is a fascinating figure - playful, meticulous, fiercely original - and this deeply researched biography gives us a beautifully layered portrait of one of America's most influential poets. 

    Paired with selections of Moore's own work, this winter's read invites us to think about creativity, resilience and the surprising paths that shape a life. I hope you'll join us.

    How it works

    Book cover of Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore by Linda Leavell, featuring a sepia-toned portrait of a woman wearing a brimmed hat and coat against a dark background, with the title and author text arranged vertically on the left.

    There is no cost to participate. Simply purchase a copy of the book and sign up below to receive emails.

    This title is available as a paperback as well as an ebook through Kindle and Nook. You can also find ebook versions through OverDrive or Libby.

    We also suggest a copy of a collection of Moore's work, Observations: Poems to read along with her biography.

     If you need help finding a copy of either title, just let us know.

    Sign up for the Loyal Blues Book Club

    Winter Reading Cycle

    Once you've signed up, you will receive weekly emails to guide you through the reading period, which will run from January 6 until February 10. You can also join our Facebook Forum to discuss the book and post questions.

    Virtual Events

    Tuesday, January 27, 2026 | "Your Thorns are the best part of you: Marianne Moore's Prickly and Uplifting Poetics"

    6:00 p.m. EST

    Cristanne Miller
    SUNY Distinguised Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of English Emerita

    Professor Miller has published broadly on nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry. On Moore, her books include Marianne Moore: Questions of Authority (1995); Cultures of Modernism: Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, Else Lasker-Schüler. Gender and Literary Community in New York and Berlin (2005); and The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore (1997; General Editor, Bonnie Costello). Miller is also the founding director of the Marianne Moore Digital Archive—an electronic archive that is publishing in digitized, transcribed, and annotated form all 122 of Moore’s working notebooks. On Dickinson, Miller has published three monographs and edited Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them (2016), winner of the MLA Best Scholarly Edition Prize, and The Letters of Emily Dickinson (co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell, 2024). In 2017, she was awarded the UB President’s Medal for Excellence in Scholarship and Service. Among other grants, she has received a $300,000 NEH grant for the Moore Digital Archive (2025).

    Tuesday, February 10, 2026 | Book Discussion

    12:00 p.m. EST

    Evviva Weinraub Lajoie
    SUNY Vice Provost for University Libraries

    Join us for a converstion about the book with our host, Evviva Weinrab Lajoie. 

    Discussion Questions & Resources

    Previous Loyal Blues Book Club Reads:

    • All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
    • Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
    • City of Light by Lauren Belfer
    • Dubliners by James Joyce
    • Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
    • Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
    • Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
    • Kindred by Octavia Butler
    • Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
    • Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman Her Own Architect by Kelly Hayes McAlonie 
    • North By Shakespeare by Michael Blanding
    • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
    • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
    • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
    • The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
    • The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
    • The Overstory by Richard Powers
    • The Personal Librarian by Heather Terrell and Victoria Christopher Murray
    • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
    • Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil

Suggest a Book

Have a book that you think might be interesting for the book club to read? Drop us a note and we'll add it to our list of recommendations.