General Info, News and Updates
New members are always welcome to join in our monthly discussions. We regularly meet once a month, usually on the last Wednesday of each month at 7 PM at the North Plains Public Library. Books are chosen every year by a consensus of all members. The following are our upcoming book choices and discussion dates, plus a list of some of our past book choices.
Current Selection
February 29, 2012 – Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese
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Summary: The story takes place primarily in Ethiopia at a medical clinic. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland.
This book was chosen for our month long One Book One Community reading program this year. Besides two book discussions there will be numerous programs throughout the month of February focused on this engaging book. Be sure to check the website for the calendar of events
As part of our One Book One Community program we will hold two book discussions this month. Join us on Wednesday, February 29 at 10 a.m. or at 7 p.m. at the library for a discussion of this book. As always, refreshments will be served.
Upcoming Selections
March 28, 2012 – The Warmth of Other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson
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Summary: In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.
April 25, 2012 – State of Wonder – Ann Patchett
- Summary: A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years–a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past.
May 30, 2012 – Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
- Summary: In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls’ school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them–along with Callie’s failure to develop–leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
June 27, 2012 - In the Garden of Beasts – Erik Larson
- Summary: The bestselling author of “Devil in the White City” turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
July 25, 2012 – Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness – Alexander Fuller
- Summary: Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly-lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother’s childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father’s English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own. A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and forgiveness, this intimate exploration of Fuller’s family – at its heart, the story of her mother, Nicola – is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious as Nicola herself.
August 29, 2012 – 1491 – Charles C. Mann
- Summary: Charles Mann takes us on a journey of scientific exploration. We learn that the Indian development of modern corn was one of the most complex feats of genetic engineering ever performed. That the Great Plains are a third smaller today than they were in 1700 because the Indians who maintained them by burning died. And that the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.
September 26, 2012 – Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
- Summary: The best-selling author of Blink identifies the qualities of successful people, posing theories about the cultural, family, and idiosyncratic factors that shape high achievers, in a resource that covers such topics as the secrets of software billionaires, why certain cultures are associated with better academic performance, and why the Beatles earned their fame.
October 31, 2012 – The Girl Who Fell from the Sky – Heidi Durrow
- Summary: The daughter of a Danish immigrant and a black G.I., Rachel survives a family tragedy only to face new challenges. Sent to live with her strict African-American grandmother in a racially divided northwest city, she must suppress her grief and reinvent herself in a mostly black community. A beauty with light brown skin and blue eyes, she attracts much attention in her new home. The world wants to see her as either black or white, but that’s not how she sees herself.
November 28, 2012 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot
- Summary: Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.
December 26, 2012 – The Cat’s Table – Michael Ondaatje
- Summary: A stunning new novel, by turns poignant and electrifying, about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a sea voyage.
January 30, 2013 – Hemingway’s Boat – Paul Hendrickson
- Summary: An illuminating reconsideration of a key period in the life of Ernest Hemingway that will change the way he is perceived and understood. Focusing on the years 1934 to 1961–from his pinnacle until his suicide–Paul Hendrickson traces the writer’s exultations and despair around the one constant in his life during this time: his beloved boat, Pilar. We follow him from Key West to Paris, to New York, Africa, Cuba, and finally Idaho, as he wrestles with his angels and demons. Whenever he could, he returned to his beloved fishing cruiser, to exult in the sea, to fish, to drink, to entertain friends and seduce women, to be with his children. But as he began to succumb to fame, we see that Pilar was also where he cursed his critics, saw marriages and friendships dissolve, and tried, in vain, to escape his increasingly diminished capacities. Generally thought of as a great writer and an unappealing human being, Hemingway emerges here in a far more benevolent light. Drawing on previously unpublished material, including interviews with Hemingway’s sons, Hendrickson shows that for all the writer’s boorishness, depression, and alcoholism, and despite his anger, he was capable of remarkable generosity.
Past Selections
January 25, 2012 – The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman
November 30, 2011 – Mink River – Brian Doyle
October 26, 2011 – Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese
October 5, 2011 – Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand
August 31, 2011 – The Other Wes Moore – Wes Moore
July 27, 2011 – Caleb’s Crossing – Geraldine Brooks
June 29, 2011 – Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson
May 25, 2011 – Out Stealing Horses – Per Petterson
April 27, 2011 – The Help – Kathryn Stockett
March 30, 2011 – Too Close to the Falls – Catherine Gildiner
February 23, 2011 – The Whistling Season – Ivan Doig
January 26, 2011 – Life’s That Way – Jim Beaver
December 29, 2010 – The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
December 1, 2010 - Heart in the Right Place - Carolyn Jourdan
October 27, 2010 – Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA - Kris Radish
September 29, 2010 – Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet – Jamie Ford
May 26, 2010 – The Friday Night Knitting Club – Kate Jacobs
April 28, 2010 – People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
March 31, 2010 – The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein
February 24, 2010 – Three Cups of Tea – by Greg Mortenson
January 27, 2010 – A biography of Sandra Day O’Connor (of your choosing)
December 2, 2009 – Dewey: the small-town library cat who touched the world – by Vicki Myron
October 28, 2009 – The Pleasure of My Company – by Steve Martin
September 30, 2009 – The Other – by David Guterson
August 26, 2009 – The Long Walk Home – by Will North
July 29, 2009 – The Bookseller of Kabul – by Asne Seierstad
June 24, 2009 – Crazy in Alabama – by Mark Childress
May 27, 2009 – Water For Elephants – by Sara Gruen
April 29, 2009 – An Irish Country Doctor – by Patrick Taylor
March 25, 2009 – Garden View – by Mary Freeman
February 25, 2009 – Stubborn Twig – by Lauren Kessler
January 28, 2009 – Tisha : the story of a young teacher in the Alaska wilderness – by Anne Purdy
December 31, 2008 – Cancelled
November 24, 2008 (Monday) – Forward From Here – by Reeve Lindbergh
October 29, 2008 – Frankenstein – by Mary Shelley
September 24, 2008 – Three Cups of Tea – by Greg Mortenson
August 27, 2008 – The Year of Fog – by Michelle Richmond
July 30, 2008 – The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – by Alexander McCall Smith
June 25, 2008 – Infidel – by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
May 28, 2008 – Then We Came to the End – by Joshua Ferris
April 30, 2008 – A Gathering of Finches – by Jane Kirkpatrick
March 26, 2008 – Big Stone Gap – by by Adriana Trigiani
Feb. 28, 2008 – Shadow of the Wind – by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jan 30, 2008 – Cakes & Ale – by W. Somerset Maugham
