Our book club discussions are held about every six weeks. They take place at 7pm on Tuesday evenings in the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library board room and are moderated by a librarian. All are welcome!
To reserve a book, please visit the library catalog or contact the reference desk at 828-7125.
2013 Book Discussion Schedule
January 8 Buddha in the Attic – OtsukaThe story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago.
February 12 Mrs. Kennedy and Me — HillFrom the election of John F. Kennedy until after the election of Lyndon Johnson, Clint Hill was the Secret Service agent assigned to guard the glamorous and intensely private Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. During those years, he went from being a reluctant guardian to a fiercely loyal watchdog and, in many ways, her closest friend.
March 26 Art of Hearing Heartbeats – SendkerWhen a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter has any idea where he might be, until they find a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her father’s past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived. There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion.
April 30 San Miguel by BoyleThe lives of three women on turn-of-the-20th-century San Miguel are shaped by ambition and circumstance, including the wife of a Civil War veteran who hopes to recover her health, her rebellious aspiring actress daughter and a librarian who wonders if the island’s peace will endure in the face of looming war.
June 11 House of Stone by ShadidIn 2006, Shadid, an Arab-American raised in Oklahoma, was covering Israel’s attack on Lebanon when he heard that an Israeli rocket had crashed into the house his great-grandfather built, his family’s ancestral home. He soon realized that he had lost his passion for a region that had lost its soul. He had seen too much violence and death; his career had destroyed his marriage. Seeking renewal, he set out to rebuild the house that held his family’s past in the town they had helped settle long ago.
September 3 Empire Falls by Russo A powerful portrait of blue-collar America, a timeless tribute to the inherent decency and good humor that sustains working-class people in everyday life.
October 15 Blame by Huneven Waking up in jail after an alcoholic blackout, history professor Patsy McLemoore learns that she accidentally killed two people, an event for which she spends decades atoning and transforming her life for the better before learning a perspective-changing truth.
December 3 Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by Margolick Their names may not be well known, but the image of them from 1957 surely is: a black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He follows the painful journey as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century later. And yet, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.
