Hi everyone, first the reminder! The SSC Library Book Club for Adults December gathering will be held this Friday, December 8, 2023, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., in the Community Room at the library.

We’ll be discussing our December Read, Recitatif, a short story by Toni Morrison with an interesting and in-depth analysis introduction by Zadie Smith; which it is recommended that you read after you finish reading the short story – should you wish to!

Looking forward, our January 2024 gathering will be held on Friday, January 12, 2024, at the usual time of 3:00 – 4:00 pm. Our January Read is Birnam Wood: A Novel by Eleanor Cattan.

Copies of the January Read may be picked up at the Circulation Desk at any time.

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Hi everyone, first off, looking forward, our December Book Club for Adults gathering will be held at the library on Friday, December 8, 2023, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.  

We’ll be reading and discussing Toni Morrison’s short story Recitatif, and it has been recommended by book club members who have read the book to skip the lengthy and intelligent introduction, which if you read if first might be distracting, and read the book first – then you can read Zadie Smith’s introduction if you’d like to do so.   

Here is an overview of the Recitatif plot:  

The only short story Nobel laureate Morrison ever wrote, “Recitatif” concerns Twyla and Roberta, friends in childhood, who lost touch as adults but keep encountering each other at places like a grocery store, a diner, and a protest march. One is white, one is black, but readers don’t know which is which, Morrison having aimed to craft “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” Bearing an introduction by Zadie Smith, this is the story’s first-time appearance as a stand-alone. – Library Journal   

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Our November 2023 Read was Maame by Jessica George  

And in a nutshell, Maame is a bildungsroman tale focusing on twenty-five-year-old Maddie Wright.   

In Twi, the native langue of Maddie’s Ghanian born parents, the word “Maame” means “woman” and refers to a responsible woman who can be relied upon; usually in a familial setting.  And Maddie certainly fits that bill, becoming the main breadwinner, caregiver and household organizer for her family.   

As the novel opens, readers are introduced to Maddie who lives in Croydon, a borough of London, England. Maddie’s parents immigrated to the U.K. from Ghana before she was born, and Maddie and her sibling James were born and raised in the U.K. and are more English than Ghanian.   

Maddie’s mother has spent years at a time living apart from the family; living in Ghana helping her brother, Maddie’s uncle, run a family business. Thus Maddie, from the age of twelve, has been the person that takes care of the family’s household, paying bills, making meals, cleaning etc.   

Maddie’s parents did not get along well when they were living in the same household; and Maddie’s elder brother James moved out of the house as soon as he was old enough to do so, leaving Maddie to run the household alone.   

And just as Maddie was finishing up at university and becoming open to the possibility of moving out of the family home and away from the responsibility of taking care of her parent’s household, her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.   

So, Maddie goes from taking care of the family household to taking care of the family household, and her father’s caregiving needs and working full-time.  

Maddie’s father is assigned a health aide who helps him with personal tasks and assists him in eating meals, so Maddie is able to work outside the home; which is a good thing for the family as her mother frequently calls from Ghana to ask her for money. However, it is not a good thing for Maddie personally, as she is expected to put money into the household and has no support, financial or otherwise, from her mother or brother.   

So, Maddie is struggling to juggle all the things she is responsible for, when two big things occur. Firstly, she is unfairly fired from her job; and secondly, after several years of living abroad her strongly opinionated mother returns home.   

The rest of the novel unfolds as Maddie’s mother pick up the tasks of running the household and taking care of her husband, Maddie’s father; Maddie moves out of the family home into a flat with two other young women and, in essence, begins to truly live her life. She lands a new job that she likes, dates several young men before finding one that seems to be a good match, works on having healthier relationships with her mother and brother, and slowly gains confidence in herself.  

Towards the end of the book a not unexpected death occurs, and revelations about Maddie’s parent’s early life, shed light on why their lives, and Maddie’s early life, unfolded the way they did.   

And one cannot offer a cliff notes overview of the novel, without noting that Maddie is a big Googler. She googles questions to see how other people do things, in contrast, to how the Generation X member typing this overview would use Google, to look for information.   

Maddie, being a Digital Native, uses a Google search as a touch stone to determine how she should do things; including inquiring how long one should wait after a flat mate breaks up with a boyfriend to go out on a date with her flat mate’s former boyfriend.  

The consensus of book club members was that Maame was a fun first novel with a lead character readers can happily cheer on; and that readers can expect more top-notch novels from the author, who is only in her twenties, in the future.   

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Book Club Members Recommended Reads & Watches:   

Recommended Reads:  

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer:  

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).  

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return  

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The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune: 

Quirk and charm give way to a serious exploration of the dangers of complacency in this delightful, thought-provoking Orwellian fantasy from Klune (Heartsong). Caseworker Linus Baker of the Department in Charge of Magical Youths (DICOMY) believes he is doing right by the preternaturally gifted children placed in DICOMY-sanctioned orphanages. But Linus begins to question DICOMY’s methods when the ominous Extremely Upper Management tasks Linus with evaluating the isolated Marsyas Island Orphanage and reporting not only on the island’s extraordinary children—among them a female gnome, a blob of uncertain species who wants to be a bellhop, and a shy teenage boy who turns into a small dog when startled—but also on the orphanage master, Arthur Parnassus. The bonds Linus forms with the children and the romantic connection he feels for Arthur set Linus on a path toward redemption for the unwitting harm he caused as a cog in an uncaring bureaucratic machine. By turns zany and heartfelt, this tale of found family is hopeful to its core. Readers will revel in Klune’s wit and ingenuity. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review  

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Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most by Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, et al :  

Based on the Yale class, a guide to defining and then creating a flourishing life, and answering one of life’s most pressing questions: how are we to live?  

What makes a good life? The question is inherent to the human condition, asked by people across generations, professions, and social classes, and addressed by all schools of philosophy and religions. This search for meaning, as Yale faculty Miroslav Volf, Matthew Croasmun, and Ryan McAnnally-Linz argue, is at the crux of a crisis that is facing Western culture, a crisis that, they propose, can be ameliorated by searching, in one’s own life, for the underlying truth.   

In A Life Worth Living, named after its authors’ highly sought-after undergraduate course, Volf, Croasmun, and McAnnally-Linz chart out this question, providing readers with jumping-off points, road maps, and habits of reflection for figuring out where their lives hold meaning and where things need to change.  

Drawing from the major world religions and from impressively truthful and courageous secular figures, A Life Worth Living is a guide to life’s most pressing question, the one asked of all of us: How are we to live?   

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Storied Life of A. J. Fickey: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin: 

A.J. Fikry is the owner of Island Books on Alice Island (think Martha’s Vineyard) near Hyannis, MA. Over his porch hangs the faded sign “No Man Is an Island; Every Book Is a World.” A.J. is a young widower, struggling to keep the bookstore afloat and his increasingly lonely life intact. Matchmaking attempts by the islanders for Fikry have failed miserably. His prickly reactions to friends and customers have discouraged attempts to help him heal. Even the publishers’ sales reps who call on the store cringe at his strident and curmudgeonly manner. Then one day A.J. discovers in his store a child abandoned by her mother, and his life takes a surprising turn. Maya is a bright and precocious two-year-old who steals his heart. As word spreads of his efforts at single parenting, the store becomes a community focus once again, and everyone takes a hand in raising young Maya–including a charming rep who had been so gruffly chased away. VERDICT Readers who delighted in Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and Jessica Brockmole’s Letters from Skye will be equally captivated by this adult novel by a popular YA author about a life of books, redemption, and second chances. Funny, tender, and moving, it reminds us all exactly why we read and why we love. – Library Journal Review    

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The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong: 

The Paris Library meets The Flight Girls in this captivating historical novel about the sacrifice and courage necessary to live a life of honor, inspired by the first female volunteer librarians during World War I and the first women accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy. 

Two women. One secret. A truth worth fighting for. 

1918. Timid and shy Emmaline Balakin lives more in books than her own life. That is, until an envelope crosses her desk at the Dead Letter Office bearing a name from her past, and Emmaline decides to finally embark on an adventure of her own—as a volunteer librarian on the frontlines in France. But when a romance blooms as she secretly participates in a book club for censored books, Emmaline will need to find more courage within herself than she ever thought possible in order to survive. 

1976. Kathleen Carre is eager to prove to herself and to her nana that she deserves her acceptance into the first coed class at the United States Naval Academy. But not everyone wants female midshipmen at the Academy, and after tragedy strikes close to home, Kathleen becomes a target. To protect herself, Kathleen must learn to trust others even as she discovers a secret that could be her undoing.  

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Young Jane: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin:   

If you’re going to have an affair with a married congressman, don’t blog about it. That’s one of the tough lessons young Aviva Grossman learns in this splendid novel. As a 20-year-old intern for an up-and-coming politician in South Florida, Aviva makes a series of poor choices that lead to a scandal, destroying her career before it has even begun. Years later, an event planner named Jane Young is running for mayor in her Maine town when the specter of the Grossman affair threatens to derail her candidacy. A witty, strongly drawn group of female voices tells Aviva’s story, three generations exploring the ripple effect her actions created. Zevin, whose works include several YA and adult novels, including The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry (2014), has created a fun and frank tale. Her vibrant and playful writing, and the fully realized characters taking turns as narrator, bring the story a zestful energy, even while exploring dark themes of secrecy and betrayal. Zevin perfectly captures the realities of the current political climate and the consequences of youthful indiscretions in an era when the Internet never forgets. – Booklist   

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Suggested Watching:  

Recommended Watches:   

Kim’s Convenience (2016-2021) (Netflix)   

Link to access trailer:  

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Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL