Book Discussion Groups
Our January read is Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes, plus the Flaubert story that inspired it, Un Coeur Simple, which can be found in BCCLS as A Simple Heart or on Project Gutenberg as A Simple Soul.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
Our December title is 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff
This charming classic brings together twenty years of correspondence between a freelance writer living in New York City and a used-book dealer in London. Though never meeting, and separated geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. To attend on Zoom, register here.
Books Now and Then (hybrid)
We’re observing Native American Heritage Month with There, There, by Tommy Orange.
This wondrous and shattering award-winning novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion, sacrifice and heroism.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
Our October read is The Reader by Bernhardt Schlink.
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
Our title for Hispanic Heritage Month is Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño, a chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.
Alberto Ruiz-Tagle is an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
This month we’re reading The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood. The Booker Prize winner’s first novel is both a scathingly funny satire of consumerism and a heady exploration of emotional cannibalism.
To attend via Zoom, register here.
Note the change of time for July. We’ll begin at 6 pm.
Our July read is Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life by Pamela Erens
With special guest, author Pamela Erens.
Erens explores the influence Middlemarch had on her development as a novelist and the way it called into question the narratives she told herself about her life.
If you’d like to attend on Zoom, register here.
The location for this month’s meeting is to be determined.
Our Pride Month title is Maurice by E.M.Forster
This tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England follows Maurice Hall from his youth and throughout his life. The poet, philosopher and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter and his partner presented a real-life model for the main characters.
Our AAPI Month title is Thousand Cranes Yasunari Kawabata. We will be virtual again this month.
Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead. REGISTER HERE.
For National Poetry Month, we’ll be discussing selections from Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets. To receive a copy of the selected poems, please email programs@maplewoodlibrary.org.
We’ll be meeting on Zoom this month. Register here.
Our March title is Middlemarch by George Eliot
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Through interweaving stories, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama.
The group will meet via Zoom this month. REGISTER HERE.
Our February read is In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Inspired by a true story, this tale of courage during the Trujillo dictatorship follows three young sisters who were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government.. Register here.
Our Black History Month read is Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.
Register here to attend via Zoom.
Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer
Based on the award-winning novelist’s own family history, this is a spellbinding multigenerational family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our January read is On Beauty by Zadie Smith, a wise, hilarious story of an interracial family whose misadventures in the culture wars serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political.
Register here to attend online
Upcoming titles:
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)
Our December title is Woman of the Ashes by Mia Couto
Alternating between two voices, this novel combines folkloric prose with extensive historical research to give a spellbinding and unsettling account of war-torn Mozambique at the end of the nineteenth century. REGISTER HERE.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our December title is Howards End by E.M. Forster
In turn-of-the-century England, a strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life.
Upcoming titles are:
January: On Beauty by Zadie Smith
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)
Our November title is In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
This novel,rich with history, mythology, folklore, and emotion, will take you to the very depths of despair and reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive during the Cambodian genocide.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our Native American Heritage Month title is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, and that the awakening of an ecological consciousness requires a celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Our October title is Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce, which centers the female body in a radical exploration of desire, choice, and consequences and revels in the narrator’s autonomy to make choices and face the outcomes. REGISTER HERE.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our October title is The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Based on real events, this work of historical fiction is set against a missing-heir trial that divided Victorian England. Who gets to tell their story, and who is to be believed?
Our September title is The World in Half by Christina Henriquez. A woman sets out on a search for her father, the man she hopes can heal her ailing mother-and who can help her find the pieces of her own identity. Register here.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our September title is Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli
An emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family on the brink of a crisis, whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border. Register here to attend via Zoom.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our August title is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Inspired by Dickens’ David Copperfield, this brilliant novel enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity. Register to attend on Zoom.
Our July title is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towle
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Register to attend virtually.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our Pride Month title is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. It paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. Register to attend virtually.
Our June title is The Hop by Diana Clarke
A compelling feminist novel that tells the story of a poor scrappy girl from rural New Zealand who grows reluctantly into a sex icon, the face of a movement, and a mother, all at the same time.
Register here.
Our Pride Month title is Fine: a Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing
Tender and wise, inclusive and inviting, Fine is an indispensable account for anyone eager to define gender in their own terms. Register here.
In our G(r)ay Matter Book Group we discuss works by contemporary LGBTQIA+ and Two-spirit authors in a variety of genres, including fiction, history, memoirs, poetry, science fiction, and graphic novels.
Our AAPI Month title is The Third Son by Julie Wu
The Third Son is a sparkling and moving story about a young boy with his head in the clouds who, against all odds, finds himself on the frontier of America’s space program.
REGISTER HERE
This is a virtual only event
AAPI Month read is the short story “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami. Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures.
Our May title is Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis, fictional and complex portrait of bestselling author Patricia Highsmith caught up in the longing that would inspire her queer classic, The Price of Salt.
In our G(r)ay Matter Book Group we discuss works by contemporary LGBTQIA+ and Two-spirit authors in a variety of genres, including fiction, history, memoirs, poetry, science fiction, and graphic novels.