Hi everyone, just a reminder we’ll be gathering at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., this Friday, June 13, to discuss our June Read The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez. 

Copies of our July Read, Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout, which incidentally features two of her main characters for her other works, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton.

Our July Book Club gathering date/time is: Friday, July  11 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Also of note, the library will be closed on Thursday, June 12 due to maintenance issues – as they are working on replacing the water and sewer lines.

The library is planning on re-opening at its usual time of 9:00 a.m. on Friday, June 13, when will be open our regular hours of 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. 

Have a great day everyone!

Linda

– 

And here are the After May Book Club Notes for May: 

Our May Book Club Read was Colored Television by Danzy Senna 

In a nutshell, Colored Television tells the story of a forty-something biracial writer & adjunct professor named Jane, her black husband Lenny who is an idealistic painter, and their two young children. The family have moved around a lot in the Los Angeles area, house sitting, as the price of rental and for sale properties in the area has skyrocketed and is out of their reach.  

During the novel, Jane finally completes the novel she has been working on for ten years and gives it to her publisher hoping that once it is published, she will finally receive tenure at the college where she works. Her novel is rejected by her publisher; Jane doesn’t get tenure, is frustrated and tries working as a television screenwriter for TV producer named Hampton Ford.  Subsequently, her rejected novel is read by the unscrupulous Ford who steals the ideas in her book and uses them as the basis for a hit TV series.  

Meanwhile, Jane’s husband, Lenny, has not been doing well professionally either. The consensus is that his artwork would sell well if he only he let it be known in/on his paintings that he is a black man. Lenny refuses to change the way he paints, believing art should speak for itself.  

Friction occurs between Jane and Lenny as they work through their difficulties. Jane seeks legal counsel regarding the theft of her unpublished manuscript but is told that as Hampton Ford is so wealthy and influential it is unlikely that she could win a case against him.  

Then the friend Jane is house sitting for returns home early and Jane and her family must move out of his house before they are ready to do so.  Lenny is practical looking for apartments they can afford, which are not in desirable locations. Jane wants to live in an area she calls “Multicultural Mayberry,” but the prices of homes in that area are out of their range. Jane walks the Multicultural Mayberry neighborhood and goes crying into a retirement home where she tells the manager who is on duty; she wants to live in the area but can’t afford to do so. The manager allows the family to temporarily move into the Retirement Home, and the novel ends with Jane sitting in the common room with other residents and watching Hampton Ford’s popular TV series, based on her manuscript. 

In an epilogue provided by the author, readers discover that eventually, Jane writes another novel which is published and obtained tenure. Lenny created a small logo for his pairings letting the world know he is a black man, and his paintings begin to sell like hotcakes in Japan. And the family is finally able to buy a house in Multicultural Mayberry.  

– 

After Jesus Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe, Brandon Scott Hal Taussig & The Westar Institute  

From the creative minds of the scholarly group behind the groundbreaking Jesus Seminar comes this provocative and eye-opening look at the roots of Christianity that offers a thoughtful reconsideration of the first two centuries of the Jesus movement, transforming our understanding of the religion and its early dissemination. 

Christianity has endured for more than two millennia and is practiced by billions worldwide today. Yet that longevity has created difficulties for scholars tracing the religion’s roots, distorting much of the historical investigation into the first two centuries of the Jesus movement. But what if Christianity died in the fourth or fifth centuries after it began? How would that change how historians see and understand its first two hundred years? 

Considering these questions, three Bible scholars from the Westar Institute summarize the work of the Christianity Seminar and its efforts to offer a new way of thinking about Christianity and its roots. Synthesizing the institute’s most recent scholarship—bringing together the many archaeological and textual discoveries over the last twenty years—they have found:  

There were multiple Jesus movements, not a singular one, before the fourth century 
There was nothing called Christianity until the third century 
There was much more flexibility and diversity within Jesus’s movement before it became centralized in Rome, not only regarding the Bible and religious doctrine, but also understandings of gender, sexuality and morality. 
 

Exciting and revolutionary, After Jesus Before Christianity provides fresh insights into the real history behind how the Jesus movement became Christianity.  

After Jesus Before Christianity includes more than a dozen black-and-white images throughout. 

– 

Books Read by Book Club Members in the Past Month: 

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams: From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite. 

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.” 

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade―told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us. 

– 

The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu and Jesse Kirkwood: 

Seven struggling customers are given the unique opportunity to take home a “blanket cat” . . . but only for three days, the time it’ll take to change their lives. 

A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers the unique opportunity to take home one of seven special cats, whose “magic” is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket. 

In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy. 

But like all their kind, the “blanket cats” are mysterious creatures with unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t really what they need. Three days may not be enough to change a life. But it might just change how you see it. 

Memorial Days: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks: Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk. 

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. 

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways those of other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia’s First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death. 

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life. 

– 

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks: 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? 

Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? 

Wrong. 

In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. 

Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. 

Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences. 

– 

The Next Day by Melinda French Gates 

Transitions are moments in which we step out of our familiar surroundings and into a new landscape―a space that, for many people, is shadowed by confusion, fear, and indecision. The Next Day accompanies readers as they cross that space, offering guidance on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting. 

In this book, Melinda will reflect, for the first time in print, on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more. 

Each one of us, no matter who we are or where we are in life, is headed toward transitions of our own. With her signature warmth and grace, Melinda candidly shares stories of times when she was in need of wisdom and shines a path through the open space stretching out before us all. 

– 

One Good Thing: A Novel by Georgia Hunter:  

1940, Italy. Lili and Esti have been best friends since they first met at university. When Esti’s son Theo is born, they become as close as sisters. While a war seethes across borders, life somehow goes on—until Germany invades Italy, and the friends suddenly find themselves in occupied territory 

Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to join the resistance efforts. But when disaster strikes, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. Protect him while Esti can’t. 

Terrified to travel on her own, Lili sets out with Theo on a harrowing journey south toward Allied territory, braving Nazi-occupied villages and bombed-out cities, doing everything she can to keep the boy safe. 

A remarkable tale of friendship, romance, motherhood, and survival, One Good Thing reminds us what is worth fighting for—and that love, even amidst a world in ruins, can triumph.