Evening Book Discussion

~~Evening Book Discussions

Emma S. Clark Memorial Library~~
Emma Clark cardholders may pick up books either at the preceding discussion or later at the Reference Desk. Meetings are the 4 th Wednesday of the month in the Commnunity Room at 7:30 p.m.. Books are presented by members of the group. Background materials
are available for each book at the Reference Desk.

~~2007-2008~~

Wed. Sept. 26 The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
(pick up Aug. 22 at Reference Desk)

A first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it. Invited to live with Sultan Khan, a bookseller in Kabul, and his family for months, the account of this journalist’s experience allows the Khans to speak for themselves, giving us a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family and of a country of great cultural riches and extreme contradictions. (Little,Brown & Co.) (Pool)

Wed. Oct. 24 All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner

Retirees Joseph and Ruth Allston find their placid, rural California life disrupted by a hippie who builds a treehouse on their property and by a young married couple tragically affected by pregnancy and cancer. “Quite simply, a beautiful novel--strong, moving, wise, funny--as topical as today's newspaper,” said PW. (ILL)

Wed. Nov. 28 A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

In order to rediscover America by, as he puts it, "going out into an America that most people scarcely know is there,” Bill Bryson set out to walk, in the company of Stephen Katz, his college roommate and sometime nemesis, the length of the Appalachian Trail. His account of that adventure is at once hilarious, inspiring, and even educational. (Barnes and Noble)

Wed. Dec. 19 When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (Pool) **meet in Conference Room

Julie Otsuka’s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination—both physical and emotional—of a generation of Japanese Americans. (Knopf)

Wed. Jan. 23 Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Circ Desk)

Set in Tyler's beloved Baltimore, with some side excursions into the Washington, DC, area, the story concentrates on two middle-class couples who meet when their adopted Korean daughters arrive on the same flight from Asia. At first the new parents appear to have little in common other than the infants. The Donaldsons, who have waited many years for a child, personify stereotypical American white-bread suburbia, while the younger Yazdans are linked to a large and lively Iranian immigrant community. (Library Journal)

Wed. Feb. 28 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Pool )

This ambitious first novel by National Book Award nominee Jones looks at slavery from an unusual angle. Henry Townsend is a former slave who was purchased and freed by his own father. Through hard work, he has acquired 50 acres of farmland in Virginia. Given the slave-based agricultural economy, Townsend believes that the logical (and legal) way to work the land is with slaves, and, eventually, he owns more than 30. (Library Journal)

Wed. Mar. 26 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (Pool)

Old New York was a society of ironclad traditions, but for Newland Archer, they were too restricting to simply accept. Here is Wharton's story of human passion and satiric observation, as compelling today as when it was first published. Pulitzer prizewinner, 1921. (Barnes and Noble editors)

Wed. Apr. 23 While I was Gone by Sue Miller (*ILL)

From The Good Mother on, she has used her fiction to explore the artificially tamed emotional wilderness inhabited by husbands and wives...While I Was Gone continues this preoccupation...It swoops gracefully between the past and the present, between a woman's complex feelings about her husband and her equally complex fantasies — and fears — about another man...a beautiful and frightening book. ( Jay Parini - New York Times Book Review)

Wed. May 28 The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud ( *ILL)

From a writer "of near-miraculous perfection" (The New York Times Book Review) and "a literary intelligence far surpassing most other writers of her generation" (San Francisco Chronicle), The Emperor's Children is a dazzling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way-and not-in New York City. (Knopf)

Wed. Jun. 25 The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer (Pool )

In a place that inspired Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, young J. R. Moehringer lives with his single mother and mercurial grandfather in a cramped home with a rather-too-colorful cast of strident aunts, down-on-their-luck uncles, and their various offspring. It is 1970s Manhasset, Long Island, and J.R. is lonely and adrift. Desperate to escape, J.R.'s mother takes him on long drives, where his dreams are fueled by the sight of the deep, plush lawns and dazzling, gated mansions that served as Fitzgerald's East Egg. But it is J.R.'s introduction to the local pub and its vibrant constellation of characters that would have the greatest effect on him. (Barnes and Noble)

~~2008-2009~~

Wednesday, September 24 Small Island by Andrea Levy (Pool)

Hortense arrives from Jamaica in 1948 to make a home in London with her new husband, Gilbert. But in a place where the buildings are taller, the weather colder, and the sky more gray than anything she's experienced, she begins to question the wisdom of her decision. It is Gilbert, her new husband and a man she barely knows, who reminds her why it is she has come so far. A war veteran struggling to make a home in the city, Gilbert questions his own resolve when he finds not a hero's welcome but prejudice, contempt, and nearly insurmountable odds.” Barnes and Noble 441 p

Wednesday, October 22 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Pool)

“From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles, in what is probably her most popular novel. “ Harcourt 242 p.

Wednesday, November 19 Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian (Pool) (*in Board Rm.)

“The story revolves around Laurel Estabrook, a young social worker employed at a homeless shelter; her haunted past and a new assignment to discover the truth in a deceased client's box of old photos and negatives merge to create a compelling mystery that crosses time and geography.” Characters from The Great Gatsby are part of the mystery in this thriller. Library Journal 368 p.

Wednesday, December. 17 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai (Pool) (* in Board Room)

The Cultural Revolution of Chairman Mao Zedong altered Chinese history in the 1960s and '70s, forcibly sending hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals to peasant villages for "re-education." This moving, often wrenching short novel by a writer who was himself re-educated in the '70s tells how two young men weather years of banishment, emphasizing the power of literature to free the mind. Sijie's unnamed 17-year-old protagonist and his best friend, Luo, are bourgeois doctors' sons, and so condemned to serve four years in a remote mountain village, Only their ingenuity—and literature helps them to survive. Publishers Weekly. 184 p.

Wednesday, Jan. 28 The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls (Pool)

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. *****

Wednesday, February 25 Pearl by Mary Gordon (Pool)

“ Gordon's latest novel opens in medias res on Christmas night in New York City with a phone call from the State Department. Maria Meyers's 20-year-old daughter, Pearl, supposedly studying linguistics for a year in Ireland, has chained herself to a flagpole outside the American embassy in Dublin. For reasons that are unclear, she has starved herself for six weeks and is now in serious danger of dying from dehydration. Without understanding Pearl's motivation for the hunger strike, Maria must try and save her daughter's life.” Publishers Weekly 354 p.

Wednesday, March 25 Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (Pool)

“As the New York Times restaurant critic, Ruth Reichl wielded more power than any other food arbiter in the country. It's not surprising, then, that managers circulated her picture and offered bonuses for advance notice of her visits. Knowing that "to be a good restaurant critic, you have to be anonymous," Reichl went undercover, donning frumpy wigs and unstylish outfits, and presenting herself as Molly Hollis, retired Michigan high school teacher.” Barnes and Noble 328 p.

Wednesday, April 22 March by Geraldine Brooks (Pool)

“In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, readers see a perfect, self-sacrificing, loving, close-knit family. Brooks here concentrates on the absent father. Referring to him as simply March, Brooks creates a picture of his struggle with his not-so-perfect life during his tour of duty as a chaplain on the Civil War battlefields of Virginia. What emerges is the complex conflict of a man of principle who must adjust to fit the reality he encounters. March wrestles with hatred, evil, violence, ignorance, rage, lust, illness, and competing loyalties, from both outside himself and within.” Library Journal 278 p.

Wednesday, May 27 Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (Interloan)

Award-winning Norwegian novelist Petterson renders the meditations of Trond Sander, a man nearing 70, dwelling in self-imposed exile at the eastern edge of Norway in a primitive cabin. Trond's peaceful existence is interrupted by a meeting with his only neighbor, who seems familiar. The meeting pries loose a memory from a summer day in 1948 when Trond's friend Jon suggests they go out and steal horses.” Publishers Weekly 258 p.

Wednesday, June 24 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Pool)

In this Pulitzer prizewinning novel, “ the apocalypse itself becomes a set piece. Unfolding in a terrifying future where Armageddon has been waged and lost, The Road traces the odyssey of a father and his young son through a desolate landscape of devastation and danger. Powerful, moving, and extraordinary by any standard, this is McCarthy at his greatest and gravest.” Barnes and Noble 241 p.

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