Here are the notes from the 3-21-12 meeting at the Bessemer Library:
ASRT – March 21st, 2012
Bessemer Public Library
Getting started
If you are thinking of starting a book club, you may have a lot of questions running through your mind. Here are a few questions with responses shared during our meeting:
What types of books will you read? Will you focus on a specific topic or genre? How will you choose which books to read?
This will depend on your community and what type of interest that has been expressed. All fiction? All nonfiction? A mix? Popular fiction? Literary fiction? For the first year consider having a mix and see what the response is.
A suggestion: you may want to only pick books that you or another staff member have read - that way there are no surprises! If that isn’t possible, read what other people are saying online at Amazon or Goodreads.
How far ahead will you plan? Most libraries choose for 6 months or a year at a time.
How will members obtain copies of books? You can put holds on the individual patron’s card, then they are notified when it is available. Another way is for the library to request copies under the library’s card and have them available at the front desk for patrons to check out whenever they are in the library.
Some libraries purchase the copies needed, others rely on the copies in the system. If you don’t want to have to buy additional copies at your library, choosing a book that has peaked on popularity. Choose books that have already come out in paperback.
How long will meetings last? Plan for at least an hour, but one librarian suggested reserving your meeting space for 2 hours, to allow for wrapping up the meeting and socializing.
Will refreshments be provided? Almost all the libraries provide some type of light refreshments.
Who is responsible for providing author information and giving an introduction to the group's discussion? All of the libraries in attendance said they lead their own discussions and provide background information. Also, several book groups email or call book club members to remind them of meetings. Some groups send the author background and discussion questions before the meeting.
What some libraries in Jefferson County are doing
Avondale: Adaptations Book Club is a book group that reads books that have a movie tie-in. They typically get about a dozen for the book discussion; more tend to show up for the movie screening.
Botanical Gardens: BBG Library and Emmet O’Neal have collaborated with a book club called Thyme to Read. They read books (fiction and nonfiction) inspired by nature.
Clay: Alternates between fiction and nonfiction. They provide author bio, links and discussion questions before the meeting.
Emmet O’Neal: Mountain Brook has several different book clubs, one of which is a Genre Book Group. A genre/topic is chosen and members bring in books to share with the group.
Hoover has both nonfiction and fiction book groups and a group at the city’s senior center.
Hoover Fiction: Hoover buys paperbacks for the book group that are then turned into kits that can be checked out (see additional handouts or search in the catalog under ‘Hoover Public Library’). They have also Skyped with authors in the past.
Hoover Non-Fiction: They come up with a list of titles, keeping book length in mind and avoiding overtly political or religious topics. Then members vote from this list. The meetings are usually attended evenly by both men and women.
Hoover Senior Center: This group covers fiction with some nonfiction thrown in. A librarian goes there once a month to lead the discussion. She also makes a newsletter for the book club and provides a flyer with the discussion questions in advance.
Vestavia: A list of possible titles are presented to the club, members then vote from the list. This allows the librarian to retain control over what is chosen, i.e. a book that is good for discussion, isn’t too new, and appeals to the members. Tip that was shared: having an excerpt from the author or an interview can really add to the discussion.
Possible Forthcoming Book Groups:
Vestavia is planning a quarterly non-fiction group that will include special programming/speakers.
Pinson is thinking of doing a YA book club or a mother/daughter book club.
Resources
Reading Group Guides
Book Browse
Lit Lovers
– these sites are good for gathering background info and discussion questions
JCPLA Reader’s Advisory Roundtable Blog – submit your book club information to Holley (hwesley@bham.lib.al.us) to be included on the blog
Seattle Public Library How-To Guide for starting a book club
I Love Libraries Tips for starting a book club
Hoover Public Library Book Club Kits Call to reserve: 444-7820 (fiction) 444-7840 (nonfiction)
Current Master Lists for Hoover Book Club Kits (The listing on this blog is subject to change without notice. For the most current listings, consult Hoover Library's website at http://www.hooverlibrary.org/book-kits.
Nonfiction:
Titles are added at the end of processing. All titles on this list are available to the public. Please call 444-7840 to reserve a kit. Kits check out for 6 weeks.
1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle / Barbara Kingsolver
2. Angela’s Ashes / Frank McCourt
3. The Colony / John Tayman
4. Confederates in the Attic / Tony Horwitz
5. Demon in the Freezer / Richard Preston
6. Don’t let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight / Alexandra Fuller
7. Founding Mothers / Cokie Roberts
8. The Ghost Map / Steven Johnson
9. In a Sunburned Country / Bill Bryson
10. Innocent Man / John Grisham
11. Isaac’s Storm / Eric Larson
12. Lenin’s Tomb / David Remnick
13. Manhunt / James Swanson
14. Nothing Like it in the World / Stephen E. Ambrose
15. Queen of the Road / Doreen Orion
16. Shadow of the Silk Road / Colin Thubron
17. Team of Rivals / Doris Kearns Goodwin
18. Truman / David McCullough
19. Waiting for Snow in Havana / Carlos Eire
20. The Zookeeper’s Wife / Diane Ackerman
Fiction:
Titles are added at the end of processing. All titles on this list are available to the public. Please call 444-7820 to reserve a kit. Kits check out for 6 weeks.
About Schmidt by Louis Begley
Albert Schmidt is a buttoned-down lawyer of the old school. But now his life is slowly unraveling—his beloved wife has recently died; he stumbles into early retirement; and his daughter is planning to marry a man Schmidt cannot approve of. As Schmidt gropes for resolutions, he finds unexpected hope in an intense and unexpected passion. (pbk 304 pages)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
This 1921 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel chronicles Newland Archer’s confused emotions as he prepares to marry docile May Welland, while harboring a secret passion for the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska. (pbk 248 pages)
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
The survivors of a nuclear holocaust are forced to rely on their own resources as they join together in the struggle for survival amidst the ruins of Fort Repose, a small town in Florida. (pbk 323 pages)
The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
Follow Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy who leaves home in search of treasure, and who finds rewards more fulfilling than any object ever dreamed of. (pbk 197 pages)
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley
The pre-Civil War memoirs of an abolitionist who in 1855 enters the fray between Kansas free-staters and slave-holding Missourians. (pbk 480 pages)
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Seymour (Swede) Levov, finds his golden youth no protection against suffering when, during the height of the Vietnam War, his beloved daughter Merry detonates a bomb in a suburban post office. (pbk 432 pages)
Atonement by Ian McEwan
In a number of stories within a story, the repercussions of a crime in the summer of 1935 are followed through the turn of the 21st century. (pbk 351 pages)
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, two boys are sent to the country for reeducation, where their lives take an unexpected turn. While they are there, they meet the beautiful daughter of a local tailor and stumble upon a forbidden stash of Western literature. (pbk 192 pages)
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Taylor Greer hits the road wanting only to get as far away from Kentucky as possible, ending up in Arizona with a 3-year-old Cherokee girl she has inherited from a woman in a bar. (pbk 240 pages)
The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
The Bean family in Egypt, Maine struggles for survival in the face of grinding poverty. (pbk 281 pages)
Nine-year-old Eliza Naumann, a mediocre student, wins a statewide spelling bee which results in dramatic repercussions for the Naumanns. An exploration of a child's need for acceptance and the meaning of family. (pbk 274 pages)
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King
Long since retired, Sherlock Holmes is engaged in a reclusive study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. Under the master detective's instruction, 15-year-old Miss Mary Russell hones her talent for deduction, disguises, and danger in the chilling case of a landowner's mysterious fever, and in the kidnapping of an American senator's daughter in the wilds of Wales. But her ultimate challenge is yet to come. (pbk 346 pages)
Long since retired, Sherlock Holmes is engaged in a reclusive study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. Under the master detective's instruction, 15-year-old Miss Mary Russell hones her talent for deduction, disguises, and danger in the chilling case of a landowner's mysterious fever, and in the kidnapping of an American senator's daughter in the wilds of Wales. But her ultimate challenge is yet to come. (pbk 346 pages)
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxane Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan. (pbk 318 pages)
Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
Ave Maria Mulligan, a spinster at thirty-five, lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, enjoying small-town life. She discovers that she's not who she always thought she was, and starts coping with marriage proposals, greedy family members, and the trip of a lifetime in this heart warming and humorous tale. (pbk 304 pages)
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
A multi-layered story of the death of a woman's sister and husband in the 1940s, with a novel-within-a novel as a background. (pbk 521 pages)
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny NEW
It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has come not to join the revels but to recover from an investigation gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society— where an obsessive historian’s quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder. (pbk 387 pages)
The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
Fiona Sweeney helps to start a traveling library in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya. (pbk 308 pages)
Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss
Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng Bunker were the Siamese twins for whom the term was coined. Narrated by Eng, the novel follows the twins from poverty to wealth, from solitude to boundless love, from the court of the King of Siam to the crowded bedroom of their North Carolina home. (pbk 336 pages)
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Newly arrived in a small French town, Vianne Rocher opens a confectionary serving up a sympathetic ear and, always, the perfect piece of chocolat. (pbk 306 pages)
Louisa Barrett, the headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls, is treated as an equal by the men who control Buffalo, New York in 1901. Louisa is secure in her position, until a mysterious death at a nearby power plant triggers a sequence of events that forces her to return to a past she has struggled to conceal. (pbk 512 pages)
Clay’s Quilt by Silas House
On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, three- year-old Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband—a journey that ends in the death of Clay's mother. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love with his town but unsure of his place within it, finds a family to call his own. (pbk 320 pages)
Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
Widowed Dr. Iannis and his daughter Pelagia suffer during the Italian and German occupation of the Greek island of Cephallonia, but find their faith and love restored by a charming Army officer, Captain Antonio Corelli. (pbk 448 pages)
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Enid Lambert, the matriarch of a spectacularly dysfunctional family, wants her three children to come home to the Midwest for one last Christmas, even as her husband of 50 years is falling victim to Parkinson’s-induced dementia. (pbk 576 pages)
A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron
Rosemary Fell has wealth, well-connected friends, and a handsome fiancé. In a moment of kindness, Rosemary invites Eleanor Smith, a penniless young woman she sees under a streetlamp in the rain, into her home for a cup of tea. While Rosemary eventually sends Eleanor on her way she cannot undo this chance encounter and its consequences. (pbk 200 pages)
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese NEW
Marion and Shiva Stone are twins born of a nun mother and surgeon father. Abandoned by both at birth, they grow up in a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Throughout their life, love, betrayal, and medical miracles intersect their lives. (pbk 688 pages)
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
In 1865, the preparations of the Dante Club--led by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes--to release the first translation of Dante's "The Divine Comedy" are threatened by a series of murders that re-create episodes from "Inferno." (pbk 380 pages)
The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
On the verge of breaking her engagement to her high school sweetheart, Carrie Bell is forced to reconsider her decision following her fiancé’s ill-thought-out dive from Clausen's Pier. (pbk 432 pages)
The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson NEW
A sensitive boy suddenly becomes groom to Timothy and Jenny, the first pair of young elephants brought into England in the 1700s. This informative, engaging and moving book has clear insight into the impact of poverty, alienation and isolation that is as relevant today as it was then. (pbk 298 pages)
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Enter into small town, blue collar America, where big-hearted Miles Roby has given up a college education and worked at the Empire Grill for 20 years. (pbk 483 pages)
Felicia’s Journey by William Trevor
Young and pregnant, Felicia leaves her Irish hometown to search for her boyfriend in the English Midlands, only to fall in with the obese fiftyish Mr. Hilditch. (pbk 240 pages)
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
In retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with an African gray parrot. (pbk 131 pages)
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
In 1975 in an unnamed Indian city, Mrs. Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow, takes in a boarder and two Hindu tailors. Despite differences in caste, class, and religion, the four form an unlikely, fragile alliance. (pbk 624 pages)
Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers NEW
Russell Stone is a failed author turned writing instructor who meets in his class Thassadit Amzwar, so possessed by preternatural happiness that she is called Miss Generosity by her jaded classmates. When this trait is found to possibly be genetic, things change for both Stone and Amzwar. (pbk 322 pages)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson NEW
Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an old-school titan of Swedish industry makes an unexpected offer. The catch is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. (pbk 608 pages)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she had never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. (pbk 290 pages)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett NEW
Three women are about to take one extraordinary step. In 1962 Mississippi, Skeeter has just returned after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree but her mother will not be happy until she is married. Aibileen is a black maid raising her 17th white child. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. As different from one another as can be, these women will come together for a secret project that will put them all at risk. (hdbk 451 pages)
Three women are about to take one extraordinary step. In 1962 Mississippi, Skeeter has just returned after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree but her mother will not be happy until she is married. Aibileen is a black maid raising her 17th white child. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. As different from one another as can be, these women will come together for a secret project that will put them all at risk. (hdbk 451 pages)
The History of Love by Nicola Krauss
Set in contemporary New York City, old and young, past and present, loss and survival merge in this story of the connection between the elderly Polish retired locksmith Leo Gursky and the 14-year old half-orphan Alma Singer. (pbk 252 pages)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel intertwines the story of author Virginia Woolf with the lives of two contemporary women. Each woman is linked by the events of the novel, as they explore love, death, and the beauty of ordinary life. (pbk 230 pages)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
After their mother’s suicide, sisters Ruth and Lucille go to live with an eccentric aunt in eastern Washington. (pbk 224 pages)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
In the cold and crumbling castle which is their home, Cassandra Mortmain records in her journal the extraordinary account of life with her extraordinary family with characteristic honesty, as she tries to come to terms with her own feelings. (pbk 343 pages)
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
A novel based on the true story of the Mirabel sisters, who along with their husbands, worked to form an underground resistance movement against the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. (pbk 321 pages)
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
An intellectual thriller set in the Oxford of the 1660s, a time of great ferment - intellectual, religious and political. The action takes place around the suspicious death of Robert Grove, a Fellow of New College. (pbk 691 pages)
The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert
Novice private investigator Kate Morgan teams up with a European financier who is investigating a centuries-old manuscript that documents the final days of an Elizabethan-era murder victim. (pbk 368 pages)
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
A small Orthodox Jewish sect has traditionally spent summers in the Dutch community around Kaaterskill Falls, but in 1976 tensions arise both with the townspeople and some of the group’s women who resent its many restrictions. (pbk 336 pages)
The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander
Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra as seen through the eyes of the Romanovs’ young kitchen boy, Leonka. (pbk 229 pages)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Two motherless boys, Amir and Hassan, grow up together in Kabul, Afghanistan. A crime of violence changes their friendship. Later, as an adult, the cowardly Amir tries to learn the fate of Hassan’s son. (pbk 400 pages)
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Henry Townsend, black farmer and former slave, is taught by William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. When Robbins dies unexpectedly, his widow must rely on Townsend in this unflinching look at slavery. (pbk 432 pages)
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver NEW
Kingsolver tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd, an unforgettable protagonist whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the 20th century's most tumultuous events. (pbk 544 pages)
In A.D. 866, Uhtred, a boy of ten and the son of a nobleman, is captured in the same battle that kills his father. His captor is the Earl Ragnar, a Danish chieftain, who raises the boy as his own, teaching him the Viking ways of war. As a young man he grapples with divided loyalties -- between Ragnar, the warrior he loves like a father, and King Alfred, whose piety and introspection leave him cold. (pbk 351 pages)
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Martel won the Man Booker Prize for this story of sixteen-year-old Pi Patel and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, as they survive for seven months on a lifeboat following a shipwreck. (pbk 352 pages)
Losing the Moon by Patti Callahan Henry
In this powerful debut novel, a wife and mother discovers that although life has led her in a joyous direction, she still cherishes memories of her first love...the college boyfriend who captivated her heart and then, without a word of warning, disappeared. (pbk 384 pages)
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
In 1903, an attraction developed between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In time the clandestine lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. (pbk 377 pages)
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
It is Paris, 1880, and Emile Zola has penned a scathing indictment of the Impressionist painters, saying they are inferior, and that a man of genius has not yet risen from among them. Pierre-Auguste Renoir decides to challenge this assertion by creating a painting that even Zola cannot deny is genius. (pbk 434 pages)
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear NEW
Maisie Dobbs isn’t just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence—and the patronage of her benevolent employers—she works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind. (pbk 297 pages)
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson NEW
The Major leads a quiet life valuing the things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But his brother's death sparks a friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoms. Can their relationship survive the risks of pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition? (pbk 355 pages)
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
In this tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twins during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child. (pbk 401 pages)
A Mercy by Toni Morrison NEW
A slave at a plantation in Maryland offers up her daughter, Florens, to a relatively humane Northern farmer, Jacob, as debt payment from their owner. Jacob's wife, Rebekka, struggles with her faith as she loses one child after another to the harsh New World. A Native servant, Lina, craves Florens's love to replace the family taken from her, and distrusts the other servant, a peculiar girl named Sorrow. When Jacob falls ill, all these women are threatened. (pbk 196 pages)
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
In the first modern English detective story, several narrators recount the theft of an enormous diamond originally stolen from an Indian shrine. (pbk 510 pages)
My Last Days as Roy Rogers by Pat Cunningham Devoto
In an Alabama town in the early 1950s, ten-year-old tomboy, Tabitha Rutland seeks adventure with her best friend Maudie May. (pbk 384 pages)
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Precious Ramotswe establishes herself as Botswana's first female detective. In this detective-as-folk-hero tale, Precious solves many difficult matters with her innate common sense and her understanding of human nature. (pbk 240 pages)
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout NEW
Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life – sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty. (pbk 286 pages)
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Solitary Norwegian Trond Sander, a widower turning 70, reflects on his past and in particular, a transformative summer day in his youth where adventure and cruelty merged. Winner of the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. (pbk 238 pages)
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
When Kitty Fane’s husband discovers her adulterous affair he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic, where she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and to learn how to love. (pbk 246 pages)
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
A shy, middle-aged piano tuner travels to Burma to repair the rare piano of an eccentric army surgeon. (pbk 312 pages)
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
An extended family is formed when a high school teacher helps a pregnant student make a home with two elderly bachelor ranchers. (pbk 320 pages)
Pompeii by Robert Harris
Engineer Marcus Attilius Primus has taken charge of the Aqua Augusta, the aqueduct which brings water to a quarter of a million people. His predecessor has disappeared. When a crisis strikes the Augusta's main line, Attilius discovers that there are forces which even the Roman Empire can't control. (pbk 278 pages)
Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
For a thousand years men have denied her existence--Pope Joan, the woman who disguised herself as a man and rose to rule Christianity for two years. This novel animates the legend with a portrait of an unforgettable woman who struggles against restrictions her soul cannot accept. (pbk 425 pages)
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake NEW
On the eve of the US entrance into WWII in 1940, Iris James, the postmistress of Franklin, a small Cape Cod town, doesn't deliver a letter. In London, American radio gal Frankie Bard reports on the Blitz. One night in a bomb shelter, she meets a doctor from Cape Cod with a letter in his pocket that Frankie vows to deliver when she returns from Germany and France, where she will record the stories of war refugees trying to escape. The residents of Franklin think the war can't touch them but when Frankie arrives on their doorstep, the two stories collide in a way no one could have foreseen. (hdbk 326 pages)
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
This novel tells the story of the interrelated early twentieth-century lives of the families of a New Rochelle manufacturer, an immigrant socialist, and a Harlem musician and their involvement with Evelyn Nesbit, Henry Ford, Houdini, Morgan, Freud, Zapata, and other period notables. (pbk 320 pages)
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Red Tent tells the little-known Biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and his wife, Leah. In Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis, Dinah’s tale is a short, horrific detour in the familiar narrative of Jacob and Joseph. Anita Diamant imaginatively tells the story from the perspective of its women. In the Biblical tale Dinah is given no voice; she is the narrator of The Red Tent, which reveals the life of ancient womanhood. (pbk 321 pages)
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick NEW
In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is complex and devious and her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on is that Truitt has plans of his own for his new wife. (pbk 305 pages)
Room by Emma Donoghue NEW
In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. (hdbk 321 pages)
The Sea by Jon Banville
Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast where he spent a memorable holiday as a boy. His memory of that time revolves around the charismatic Grace family. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life.
A Secret History by Donna Tartt
The narrator of this story is a boy who leaves California to attend a college in New England. He falls in with a group of students of Ancient Greek. Four of their number work themselves into a trance-like condition one night, and murder a local farmer. Bunny then tries to blackmail the others. (pbk 557 pages)
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Roseanne McNulty was one of the most beautiful girls in County Sligo, Ireland. Now as a patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital she decides to record her life story. Because the hospital will close in a few months and Dr. Grene is to evaluate the patients and decide if they can return to society. As Dr. Grene researches her case he discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne's life than what she recalls. (pbk 300 pages)
The Shack by William P. Young NEW
Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack's world forever. (pbk 248 pages)
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Just after the Spanish Civil War in 1945 Barcelona, Daniel’s father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a few initiates. Each initiate takes one book and protects it for life. Daniel selects The Shadow of the Wind by unknown author, Julian Carax. Daniel discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every book Carax has written and before Daniel knows it; his innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets. (pbk 512 pages)
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
When Quoyle’s two-timing wife meets her just deserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle’s struggle to reclaim his life. (pbk 337 pages)
A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White NEW
For more than ten years, Naomi and Phil Harrison enjoyed a marriage of heady romance, tempered only by the needs of their children. But on a vacation alone, the couple perishes in a flight over the Grand Canyon. After the funeral, their daughters, Ruthie and Julia, are shocked by the provisions in their will. As they heal from loss, search for love, and begin careers, their sisterhood becomes complicated by resentment, anger, and jealousy. It seems as though the echoes of their parents’ deaths will never stop reverberating—until another shocking accident changes everything once again. (pbk 352 pages)
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. She receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. (pbk 293 pages)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
A modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. (hdbk 566 pages)
A modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. (hdbk 566 pages)
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Composed in 1941-42, this novel about the German occupation of France is embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one. This, her last work, was written under the tremendous pressure of a constant danger that was to catch up with her and kill her before she had finished. (pbk 431 pages)
Swan by Frances Mayes
A bizarre crime in the small Georgian town of Swan pulls Ginger Mason home from her life in Italy: the body of her mother, Catherine, a suicide 19 years before, has been mysteriously exhumed. As the Mason children grapple with their pasts, the startling truth about Catherine's death emerges. (pbk 319 pages)
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by C. Alan Bradley NEW
It is the summer of 1950, and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events. For Flavia, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. (pbk 385 pages)
Tall Pine Polka by Lorna Landvik
When a Hollywood movie crew shows up in Tall Pine, Minnesota, two friends find their relationship tested as one of them lands a major part in the film and both fall for the same man. (pbk 440 pages)
The Three Junes by Julia Glass
Set in Greece, Scotland, and New York, a novel about family relationships, love and loss. (pbk 368 pages)
The Three Miss Margarets by Louise Shaffer
Miss Peggy, Dr. Maggie, and Miss Li'l Bit, friends and confidantes for nearly a lifetime, have become icons in Charles Valley, Georgia. But thirty-odd years ago the three Miss Margarets did something extraordinary, clandestine, and very illegal. When a stranger's arrival in town and a tragic death open the floodgate of memory, their loyalty, friendship, and honor are tested in ways they could never have imagined. (pbk 306 pages)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger NEW
This is the story of Clare, an art student, and Henry, a librarian, who have known each other since Clare was 6 and Henry was 36, and were married when Clare was 23 and Henry 31. Impossible but true, because Henry has been diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself misplaced in time. The novel depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s marriage and their passionate love for each other as the story unfolds from both points of view. (pbk 546 pages)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee NEW
This novel is a story about innocence, knowledge, prejudice and courage. Lee tells two deftly paired stories set in a small Southern town: one focused on lawyer Atticus Finch's defense of an unjustly accused man, the other on his bright, bratty daughter's gradual discovery of her own goodness. For many young people this novel becomes their first big read, the grown-up story that all later books will be measured against. (pbk 323 pages)
Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay NEW
It is 1972 when circumstance carries Ellen Grier and her family back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin. Dutifully accompanying her newly unemployed husband, Ellen has brought her two children into the home of her in-laws on Vinegar Hill -- a loveless house suffused with the settling dust of bitterness and routine -- where calculated cruelty is a way of life preserved and perpetuated in the service of a rigid, exacting and angry God. Behind a facade of false piety, there are sins and secrets in this place that could crush a vibrant young woman's passionate spirit. (pbk 240 pages)
When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin
Set in a sleepy Southern town, this is the story of a spirited seven-year-old girl with a heart condition and the stranger who understands more about her condition than he wants to admit. (pbk 336 pages)
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga NEW
Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along. (pbk 304 pages)
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
Hazel Motes, recently discharged from the Army, becomes entranced by the power of street preaching and creates his own church, “The Church Without Christ,” upsetting the other itinerant preachers. (pbk 236 pages)
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
In 1666, the bubonic plague appeared in a small lead-mining town in England; in a novel and courageous effort to contain the disease, the local minister and his congregation take an oath to quarantine themselves until the sickness is over. (pbk 352 pages)
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Happy reading (and discussing!),
Holley
