The Book Club for Adults meets on first Thursday of each month (except January) at 6:30 pm in the Michigan Room at the library. Books are selected by the participants and the current and past books are displayed across from the Information Desk at the library.
March 3, 2011 Club selection is Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech.
Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle’s mother has disappeared. While tracing her steps on a car trip from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents, Salamanca tells story to pass the time about a friend named Phoebe Winterbottom whose mother vanished and who received secret messages after her disappearance. One of the read, “Don’t judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins.” Despite her father’s warning that she is “fishing in the air”, Salamanca hopes to bring her home. By drawing strength from her Native American ancestry, she is able to face the truth about her mother. Walk Two Moonswon the 1995 Newbery Medal. from Amazon.com review.
April, 2011 Club selection is Angel Time, by Anne Rice.
Full of provocative moral reflections, this kickoff to bestseller Rice’s new Songs of the Seraphim religious romance series centers on hired assassin Toby O’Dare, a one-time aspirant to the priesthood until personal tragedy unmoored his life. Guardian angel Malchiah visits Toby, who’s just consummated his latest kill, and offers him redemption for his sins. After accepting the offer, Toby is whisked away to 13th-century England, where, in the guise of a Dominican friar, he becomes the protector of a Jewish couple accused wrongly by the gentile populace of having murdered their young daughter for her conversion to Christianity. Two eloquently told if clunkily joined digressions give the backstory on Toby and on the persecution of the Jews in medieval Europe. Readers will revel in Rice’s colorful recreation of the historical past and in her moving depiction of characters struggling to reconcile matters of the heart with their personal sense of faith. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
May, 2011 The club selection is At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, by Wade Rouse.
At 40, Rouse is mentally and physically exhausted, hates his job, and realizes there is a void in his life that the city is no longer filling. He and his partner, Gary, take a vacation in Saugatuck, Michigan, “a Midwestern Martha’s Vineyard,” and on the spot decide to sell their home in St. Louis and move to the woods. Rouse vows to become a “modern-day Thoreau” and sets out to follow 10 life goals, roughly along the tenets espoused by Thoreau in Walden, Rouse’s favorite book. Rouse chronicles the hilarious escapades of these “two neurotic urbanites” as they ensconce themselves in the woods without magazine subscriptions, malls, Trader Joe’s, HGTV, or lattes. Rouse feels like a Martian confronting the locals at the general store, and suffers extremem anxiety when attempting ice fishing and karaoke. Gay or straight, any reader who has tried to “fit in” somewhere outside his or her comfort zone will readily empathize with Rouse’s rousing and ultimately successful lifestyle change. Booklist Review
June, 2011 Club selection is ”Owe It To The Wind” by J.R. Armstrong.
Set in the 1960′s and ’70′s this is a story of love and betrayal. It begins with the high school romance between Michael, an underprivileged all-star athlete, and Meg, an only child in an upper-middle-class home. Determined to flee an abusive parent, Michael abruptly departs their small hometown in Michigan immediately after graduation to play football for USC. Before he leaves the young lovers make a pact to meet in five years. Neither realizes the consequences of this decision or how it will forever shape their future.
July, 2011 Club selection is The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass.
Percy is an opinionated, cantankerous, newly retired Harvard librarian and nobody’s “darling,” who decides to lease his barn to a local preschool, mainly to give his daughter Clover, who has abandoned her husband and children in New York, a job. Percy’s other daughter is a workaholic oncologist in Boston who becomes important to a young mother at the school with whom Percy, to his vast surprise, establishes a romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Percy’s grandson, Robert, falls in with an ecoterrorist group. Glass handles the coalescing plot elements with astute insights into the complexity of family relationships, the gulf between social classes, and our modern culture of excess to create a dramatic, thought-provoking, and immensely satisfying novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
August 2011 Club selection is Beautiful Jim Key by Mim Eeichler Rivas
Beautiful Jim Key — the one-time ugly duckling of a scrub colt who became one of the most beloved heroes of the turn of the century — was adored not for his beauty and speed but rather for his remarkable abilities to read, write, spell, do mathematics, even debate politics. Trained with patience and kindness by one of the most renowned horse whisperers of his day — former slave, Civil War veteran, and self-taught veterinarian Dr. William Key — Jim performed in expositions across the country to wildly receptive crowds for nine glorious years, smashing box office records, clearing towering hurdles of skepticism and prejudice, and earning the respect and admiration of some of the most influential figures of the era, from Booker T. Washington to President William McKinley
September 2011, Club selection is Muffins & Mayhem, by Suzanne Beecher
Beecher, the woman behind the online book club DearReader.com, gives her fans a new story to follow – her own – in this recipe-laden memoir of dysfunction and small victories. Inspired by a reader who, having been diagnosed with lung cancer, asked for advice on what to leave her children, Beecher decided to pair a list of nostalgic recipes with the stories behind them. But those hoping for charming tales of afterschool cupcakes or Rockwellian family dinners will be in for a surprise. Beecher’s childhood was far from bucolic: an only child raised by emotionally distant parents, she got pregnant in high school and bounced between jobs and relationships until finding her calling in food. Depending on one’s perspective, this detailed account of her journey will either soothe or grate; her penchant for recounting every setback, minor victory, and anecdote requires either an appetite for drama or consumption in short bites. As for the dishes that close each chapter, they are only there to provide comfort: Funeral Cakes, goulash, and banana bread, while perfectly acceptable, are more plot device than playbook. Photos
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
October 2011, Club selection is A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah E Harkness
It all begins with a lost manuscript, a reluctant witch, and 1,500-year-old vampire. Dr. Diana Bishop has a really good reason for refusing to do magic: she is a direct descendant of the first woman executed in the Salem Witch Trials, and her parents cautioned her be discreet about her talents before they were murdered, presumably for having “too much power.” So it is purely by accident that Diana unlocks an enchanted long-lost manuscript (a book that all manner of supernatural creatures believe to hold the story of all origins and the secret of immortality) at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and finds herself in a race to prevent an interspecies war. A sparkling debut written by a historian and self-proclaimed oenophile, A Discovery of Witches is heady mix of history and magic, mythology and love (cue the aforementioned vampire!), making for a luxurious, intoxicating, one-sitting read. –Daphne Durham Amazon.com Review
November 2011, Club selection is Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors
Journey to dazzling seventeenth-century Hindustan, where the reigning emperor, consumed with grief over the tragic death of his beloved wife, commissions the building of the Taj Mahal as a testament to the marvel of their love. Princess Jahanara, their courageous daughter, recounts their mesmerizing tale, while sharing her own parallel tale of forbidden love with the celebrated architect of the Taj Mahal. This impressive novel sweeps readers away to a historical Hindustan brimming with action and intrigue in an era when, alongside the brutalities of war and oppression, architecture and the art of love and passion reached a pinnacle of perfection.
December 2011, Club selection is Clara & Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland
Vreeland (Luncheon of the Boating Party) again excavates the life behind a famous artistic creation–in this case the Tiffany leaded-glass lamp, the brainchild not of Louis Comfort Tiffany but his glass studio manager, Clara Driscoll. Tiffany staffs his studio with female artisans–a decision that protects him from strikes by the all-male union–but refuses to employ women who are married. Lucky for him, Clara’s romantic misfortunes–her husband’s death, the disappearance of another suitor–insure that she can continue to craft the jewel-toned glass windows and lamps that catch both her eye and her imagination. Behind the scenes she makes her mark as an artist and champion of her workers, while living in an eclectic Irving Place boarding house populated by actors and artists. Vreeland ably captures Gilded Age New York and its atmosphere–robber barons, sweatshops, colorful characters, ateliers–but her preoccupation with the larger historical story comes at the expense of Clara, whose arc, while considered and nicely told, reflects the times too closely in its standard-issue woman-behind-the-man scenario. (Jan.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Publishers Weekly
NO MEETING JANUARY 2012
February 2012, Club selection is Please Look after Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin
This novel from widely acclaimed Korean author Shin focuses on motherhood and family guilt. Park So-nyo, mother of four now-adult children, has gone missing in a Seoul train station on the way to visit them. The novel is told in four parts, from the perspectives of, first, her daughter, and then, her firstborn son, her husband, and finally, So-nyo herself. Composed almost entirely in second-person narration, the writing is sharp, biting, and intensely moving. So-nyo’s children continually battle with their own guilt for not taking better care of her while reminiscing about the times when they were young, growing up in incredible poverty in the countryside. The children come to terms with their mother’s absence in their own ways, and their father repents for a lifetime of neglect. When So-nyo’s voice enters the narrative, the portrait of a troubled but loving family is complete. Secrets are revealed, and the heart of a mother is beautifully exposed. This Korean million-plus-copy best-seller is an impressive exploration of family love, poverty, and triumphing over hardship. –Julie Hunt Booklist
March 2012, Club Selection is Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
When Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks came to live on Martha’s Vineyard in 2006, she ran across a map by the island’s native Wampanoag people that marked the birthplace of Caleb, first Native American to graduate of Harvard College–in 1665. Her curiosity piqued, she unearthed and fleshed out his thin history, immersing herself in the records of his tribe, of the white families that settled the island in the 1640s, and 17th-century Harvard. In Caleb’s Crossing, Brooks offers a compelling answer to the riddle of how–in an era that considered him an intellectually impaired savage–he left the island to compete with the sons of the Puritanical elite. She relates his story through the impassioned voice of the daughter of the island’s Calvinist minister, a brilliant young woman who aches for the education her father wastes on her dull brother. Bethia Mayfield meets Caleb at twelve, and their mutual affinity for nature and knowledge evolves into a clandestine, lifelong bond. Bethia’s father soon realizes Caleb’s genius for letters and prepares him for study at Harvard, while Bethia travels to Cambridge under much less auspicious circumstances. This window on early academia fascinates, but the book breathes most thrillingly in the island’s salt-stung air, and in the end, its questions of the power and cost of knowledge resound most profoundly not in Harvard’s halls, but in the fire of a Wampanoag medicine man. –Mari Malcolm Amazon.com Review
