Hi everyone, just a reminder our December Adult Book Club meeting is this Friday, December 10, 2021.

We’ll be meeting in the Conference Room at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Our December read is: Susan, Linda, Nina and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli (352 page)

If you’re digitally inclined, you can instantly checkout the eBook and audiobook versions of the book through Hoopla, online at https://www.hoopladigital.com/ or by downloading the Hoopla app to your mobile device (a library card is required!)

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, first the December book club info!

Our December meeting will be held in the Conference Room at the library on Friday, December 10, 2021 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. (Zoom link available, upon request)

Our December read is: Susan, Linda, Nina and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli (352 page)

Book Description: A group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR

In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.

Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network’s legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

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And here are the notes from our November meeting, which was held at the library on Friday, November 12, 2021.

November Read: The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales

About The Author: The author Dr. Helen Scales, is a marine biologist and teaches at Cambridge University. Dr. Scales weaves her story of the Brilliant Abyss around her experiences doing marine research, with assistance from modern robotic technology, during a trip to the Gulf of Mexico aboard a research vessel named The Pelican.

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A cliff notes overview of the book; the first half offers a description of the life forms and geological features of the deep ocean; and the second half describes how critical it is to life on the planet that the deep ocean be preserved.

The “deep ocean” is defined as the part of the ocean that starts when sunlight dwindles and the ocean waters become pitch black, down to the ocean floor. The transition from the ocean to the deep ocean starts to occur at about 200 feet below the surface. The author well describes the deep ocean, which is extensive and features a multitude of geological features including Continental Shelfs that border the continents, Continental Slopes that descend from the Continental Shelfs toward the ocean floor, the flat Abyssal Plains of the ocean floor, Seamounts (submerged mountains) and Volcanic Islands that rise from the ocean floor, and some of which break the surface of the ocean; and, at the deepest parts of the ocean, deep trenches and rift valleys located miles beneath the ocean’s surface; and which were formed over long periods of time as underwater tectonic plates shifted.

For most of human history the deep ocean has remained a mystery. In fact, the author notes that prior to the twentieth century many scientists thought the deep ocean was devoid of life. This ideology was disproven, and today with modern technology that allows scientists, via Remote Operating Vehicles, to study the deep ocean in ways never before possible; we are living in a golden age of oceanic exploration.

Scales expressively describes the marine life that live in the deep ocean including bone-eating worms, Vampire Squid, the almost wheat-like-looking Iridogoria octocoral and the eloquent Ctenophore; with tis many feeding tentacles spread out to catch the nutritious marine snow that drifts down to the deep ocean from above. And she brings home the point that the deep ocean is a vibrant ecosystem full of life.

Scales kicks off the second part of the book by noting, that history tells us that any time new lands have been discovered by the human race; that humans have subsequently exploited those lands for commercial gain; leaving the lands depleted of natural resources and the local ecosystems damaged. She goes on to discuss how human behavior is damaging the ocean via exploitation and climate change.

On the exploitation front, Scales describes some of the ways that commercial interests want to gain wealth from the ocean and she is dubious, to say the least, when some of those commercial forces assure naysayers that what they wish to do, will not harm the ocean. Examples of the potential commercial project include medicinal cures made from sea sponges, intense deep sea fishing of orange roughies (deep sea perch), deep sea mining done by sophisticated robots and certain green energy projects.

Additionally, the author makes a case that humans are already damaging the oceanic ecosystem, both by human made climate change, and by humans using the ocean as a receptacle for human junk and waste including a huge amounts of plastics.

One book club member loved this book! The others, including the hostess, thought the book, which does have academic-scientific bent, required quite a bit of work thus wasn’t quite as much fun to read and discuss as previous book club selections. The hostess concurred with that latter assessment and has promised that in the future, any non-fiction book club selections will be more accessible.

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Additional Related Resources

NOAA: Touring The Ocean Floor

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The Brilliant Abyss (what is is?) by Helen Scales (A Cambridge University Video) (49 minutes)

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Author Talk: Helen Scales, The Brilliant Abyss (Talk hosted by Nantucket Atheneum)  

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Other Books Recommended By Book Club Readers:

Beautiful County: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang – the story of how a young Chinese immigrant grew up doing menial work with her parents to pay the bills, became a star student at school and eventually a civil rights lawyer.

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On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor – the author offers an exploration of foot trails; how and why they have been created overtime by animals and people.

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

First off, is the info for our November book club gathering, which is quickly approaching!

I don’t know how time seems runs so fast, sometimes, but it does!

We’ll be meeting, next Friday, November 12, in the Conference Room at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

A Zoom link is available for anyone that would like to attend virtually – just let me know a day or more in advance of the meeting so I can set it up.

Our November read is:

The Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales (288 pages)

Here’s a description of the book:

“The oceans have always shaped human lives,” writes marine biologist Helen Scales in her vibrant new book The Brilliant Abyss, but the surface and the very edges have so far mattered the most. “However, one way or another, the future ocean is the deep ocean.”

A golden era of deep-sea discovery is underway. Revolutionary studies in the deep are rewriting the very notion of life on Earth and the rules of what is possible. In the process, the abyss is being revealed as perhaps the most amazing part of our planet, with a topography even more varied and extreme than its Earthbound counterpart. Teeming with unsuspected life, an extraordinary interconnected ecosystem deep below the waves has a huge effect on our daily lives, influencing climate and weather systems, with the potential for much more-good or bad depending on how it is exploited. Currently the fantastic creatures that live in the deep-many of them incandescent in a world without light-and its formations capture and trap vast quantities of carbon that would otherwise poison our atmosphere; and novel bacteria as yet undiscovered hold the promise of potent new medicines. Yet the deep also holds huge mineral riches lusted after by many nations and corporations; mining them could ultimately devastate the planet, compounded by the deepening impacts of ubiquitous pollutants and rampant overfishing.

Eloquently and passionately, Helen Scales brings to life the majesty and mystery of an alien realm that nonetheless sustains us, while urgently making clear the price we could pay if it is further disrupted. The Brilliant Abyss is at once a revelation and a clarion call to preserve this vast unseen world.

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September 10, 2021 Book Club Read: Learning to Speak Southern by Lindsey Rogers Cook

The main character in the book is Lexi Henry, the Margaret & Dennis Henry. Lex was born and raised in Memphis which is the contemporary setting for the novel.

Other notable characters in the book include Lexi’s godmother Cami, her childhood best friend Grant.

Lexi, who is a strong-willed woman with an independent streak, has been leading a vagabond lifestyle and teaching English in variety of countries. She has been running away from her painful childhood and making light of life and responsibilities. She lives this lifestyle until a life-upending tragedy occurs, when she loses the baby she was expecting with her unreliable boyfriend Oscar. She then is at a loss; and accepts an invitation to return to her home town, Memphis, and stay with her godmother Cami, who was her mother’s best friend.

Lexi’s relationship with her late mother Margret was a difficult one. Margaret was also a strong-willed woman, and in dealing with Lexi she was demanding, aloof and strict; and she tried very hard to get her daughter to do what she thought was best without an explanation of why.

In essence, the book tells the tale of a daughter struggling with her past, and discovering who she is, by discovering who her late mother Margaret really was. In flashback chapters and through Margaret’s journal entries, which Lexi’s godmother Cami gives her a few a time; Lexi and the readers learn that as a young woman, a strong-willed Margaret loved writing, and wanted to be a writer. Margret had a boyfriend, Dennis, that she had known she childhood and her mother expected her to marry Dennis after her high school graduation.  And then, just before she graduated from high school an author named John spoke to the students at her school. John, subsequently, invited Margaret to dinner and Margaret not only began a relationship with John, but she also left Memphis with him and traveled to his home in Europe, where she lived with him for a couple of months before discovering that he was more selfish and self-centered than she had realized, and not at all the golden writer and caring person that she thought he was.

Margaret then leaves John and goes to Paris, a city she has always wanted to visit. While Margaret is in Paris she realizes she is in quite a pickle. She has little money, no way to get back to Memphis and she is pregnant.

In the end, Margaret calls her high school boyfriend and would-be fiancé Dennis in Memphis, and he pays for her to travel home.

When Lexi first realizes Margaret had a baby with John, she thinks she is not her father, Dennis’s daughter. But as it transpires, the baby Margaret gave birth to in secret, before she married Dennis, was a son that was placed with a married couple that lived near-by. And so by the end of the book, Lexi and the readers discover that her childhood best friend, Grant, whom she spent some time hanging out with during the book, is actually Margret’s son, and thus Lexi’s half-brother. And that Lexi is indeed her father, Dennis’s daughter as she had always believed.

Learning To Speak Southern was a book of revelations, interspersed with clever literary points that Lexi and, assumedly the author, both like. It was also something of a coming of age tale, as by the end of the novel one got the impression that Lexi felt at home in Memphis with her family now consisting of her father Dennis and her half-brother Grant.

The majority of the book club group liked the novel Learning To Speak Southern. Two members did not. The book was indeed a quick read and offered an interesting story. However, for the two book club member who didn’t like the book; the reason was the same, the main character Lexi was not easy to relate too; as she seemed too self-centered. Overall though, the book club members would recommend this book.

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October 8, 2021 Book Club Read: The Unkindness of Ravens:  A Greer Hogan Mystery by M. E. Hilliard

Our October Read, The Unkindness of Ravens, is the first book published by librarian and writer M. E. Hilliard

The book follows a forty-year-old widowed librarian named Greer Hogan. It transpires, that Greer had previously lived in New York City, had a prestigious job making a six figure salary and lived with her husband, a successful businessman in an upscale apartment. And her whole world changed, when one night, she arrived home to find her husband’s body on the floor. Once her husband’s murder case was closed, she decided she needed a major change. So she decided to go and work in a setting she had always felt safe in – a public library. She quit her job, went to library school, graduated and was hired as a librarian at the gothic Raven Hill Manor Library, located in a small fictionalized town near Albany, New York.

It is obvious to anyone reading The Unkindness of Ravens that the writer has worked in a public library; because her descriptions of the work are spot on!

Consider the follow three quotes all uttered by our main character, librarian Greer Hogan:

“I spent much of my time in charge of the reading room, sitting at the reference desk, answering questions and pimping books to readers eager for something novel. Even on those days when the computers and copier were at their most uncooperative, requiring knowledge that two years of graduate school had failed to impart.”

“My desk was piled with books, copies of Publishers Weekly, catalogs of upcoming releases and files.”

“I found Mary Alice behind the Circulation desk, hip deep in returns and checking in books with practiced efficiency, Come murder, mayhem, hell or high water, the book drop must be emptied.”

So the story unfolds, mainly, in the gothic library and relays the tale both of Greer Hogan and why her friend Joanna Goodhue, who is murdered early in the book, was murdered; which relates to a mysterious death of a child many years earlier. And I’m not going to spoil the mystery by saying any more about it than that!

The author is obviously well read, and the many pop culture references throughout the book were great fun; they include reference to Columbo, Midsomer Murders, Kinsey Millhone, Joni Mitchell and even Clue’s Professor Plum in the library with a led pipe.

The book club members all enjoyed The Unkindness of Ravens, although it was noted by one member that the writing could have been a bit better; however, as  the book is the first novel published by the author, her writing may well improve as she continues to write. Having said that, the book club attendees enjoyed The Unkindness of Ravens as a light mystery, with a gothic library setting, a likeable heroine and wonderful, relatable pop-culture references interspaced at appropriate times throughout the book.

On a final, FYI note, the second book in the series, A Shadow In The Glass, is scheduled to be published in April 2022.

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Book Club Members Recommended Authors & Books

Recommended Series:

Victoria Thompson’s books; historical mysteries including The Gaslight (Murder on Astor Place, book 1) &

Counterfeit Lady (City of Lies, book 1) series

Anne Perry’s mysteries including Charlotte and Thomas Pitt (The Carter Street Hangman, book 1) & William Monk (The Face of a Stranger, book 1) series

C.S. Harris Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries; book 1 is What Angels Fear.

Specific Titles:

Bewliderment by Richard Powers

Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration by Sara Dykman

Code Name Hélène: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Rival and Courage by Anne Lamott

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Have a great day and I hope to see everyone next Friday!

Linda

Hi everyone, just a reminder, our book club gathering for this month will be this Friday, October 8 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Room at the library.

Our October read is: The Unkindness of Ravens by H. M. Hilliard

And if you need a Zoom set up for Friday, so you can participate form home – let me know and I’ll set one up and send out the link to everyone just in case that turns out to be an easier way to participate for anyone else too.

Have a great week and I hope to see everyone this Friday,

Linda

Hi everyone, in October, the first Friday  of the month is also the first day of the month!

So, our next book club meeting is early in the month! It will be  next Friday, October 8 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Room at the library.

If you’d like to join us remotely, via Zoom, please let me know by Thursday, October 7.

Our October read is The Unkindness of Ravens: A Greer Hogan Mystery by M. E. Hilliard. (336 pages) (The title is avilable as a print book through StarCat and as an instant checkout eBook & audiobook through Hoopla.)

If you can’t find a copy of the book; let me know and I will mail you one this week.

On an upcoming reading note,  I originally selected books for November and December that both non-fiction titles – and I wonder if we should change one of them so it is fiction?

The Book Club Reading List for November & December (as of right now) is:

November 12: The Brilliant Abyss: Exploring the Majestic Hidden Life of the Deep Ocean, and the Looming Threat That Imperils It by Helen Scales. (288 pages)

(Two circulating print copies of the book & available as Hoopla instant checkout eBook & audiobook)

&

December 10: Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli. (288 pages)

(Three circulating print copies of the book & available as a Hoopla instant checkout eBook)

Both non-fiction titles are reasonably short and I’m happy to leave the reading list as it is. However, as we don’t usually read non-fiction books two months in a row; and in keeping with our discussion at the last book club gathering; regarding selecting future reading titles that there are many copies of available as print books through StarCat; I thought I’d ask!

You can contact me via email: reimerl@stls.org

And if I don’t hear from anyone, I’ll assume we’re all good with reading the titles already selected for November & December.

And I’ll select titles for the next session that are complimented by having many copies available as print books to request through StarCat, since that format seems to be our collective favorite.

I should have the reading schedule for the first half of 2022 ready soon and will send it out via email and the blog.

Have a great day everyone,

Linda

Hi everyone, first up, here is the info on our September Book Club meeting & read:

SSCL September Adult Book Club Meeting, Friday, September 10, 2021

Time: 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Location: Large half of Community Room at the library

September Read: Learning To Speak Southern by Lindsey Rogers Cook (288 pages)

Learning To Speak Southern, is available for instant checkout as an eBook and audiobook through Hoopla, as an eBook and audiobook through The Digital Catalog (Libby app/send to Kindle eReader through web version catalog found at https://stls.overdrive.com/  and will be coming to StarCat as a print book shortly.

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Join September Book Club Meeting From Home Via Zoom: If you wish to join the September meeting via Zoom, please let me know at least 24 hours before our September 10 meeting. You can send me an email: REIMERL@STLS.ORG or call me at the library at 607-936-3713 x212

The notes for our July & August Book Club meetings follow.

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

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July Book Club Notes:

Our July Book Club gathering was via Zoom on Friday, July 9, 2021.

Our July read was Searching For Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok.

The cliff notes overview of the story, is that it tells the tale of the extended family of the main character, with an emphasis on the experiences of the main character, Sylvie, and her younger sister Amy.

The story also offers insight into the immigrate experience.

Sylvie and Amy are the daughters of Mr. & Mrs. Lee, who immigrated to the United States from China.

When the sister’s parents arrived in America, referred through in the text as “Ma” and “Pa”, they took manual jobs to make ends meet and money was very tight. So when Sylvie was two years old, they sent her to live with Mrs. Lee’s mother and cousin in the Netherlands ostensibly so she could have a better childhood. During the seven years Sylvie was living in the Netherlands, Amy was born in the U.S.; and being several years younger than Sylvie she was raised as the cosseted baby of the family. Sylvie returns to the U.S. to live with Ma, Pa & Amy when she is nine. The girls then spend the rest of their childhood and early adulthood living together and bonding as sisters.

When the story opens, Amy has taken a break from college, and Sylvie has already graduated from college, is successful in her profession, is married and has just flown to the Netherlands for the first time since she left years before; to visit their dying grandmother.

Not surprisingly, Amy looks up to her successful elder sister who seems to have it all. But of course, Amy’s perspective is that Sylvie has it all – Sylvie does not see herself as being successful and has found it hard to fit in while living in the Netherlands with her grandmother and second cousin’s family, while living with Amy and their parents in New York or, while going to school and working in America.

After Sylvie travels to the Netherlands, she disappears.

And then the story turns into a bit of a coming of age tale, as cosseted Amy now find herself taking charge of the search for Sylvie and uncovering not only what really happened to Sylvie; but answering the in-depth questions of why it happened as well.

The book club attendees at our July meeting enjoyed the book and its different facets and would recommend the read to others. And as only two of our book club members were able to attend the July meeting, I won’t give away the ending of the story by relaying what really happen to Sylvie Lee!

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August Book Club Notes:

Our August Book Club meeting was held at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. on Friday, August 13.

Our August read was: The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan

The Keeper of Lost Things follows three groups of characters. As the book opens readers are introduced to two sets of characters, one set living in the present and one set living forty years in the past. Additionally, a third set of characters is introduced in each of ten short stories, which are interspersed at appropriate points in the book, including at the very beginning of the book, and which relay the story of how the lost things of the title got lost, and were found by Anthony Peardew.

The first group of characters, living in the present day, includes Anthony, a writer of short stories, the keeper of lost things and fiancée of a much loved and lost lady named Theresa, Anthony’s personal assistant Laura, his gardener Freddy and a sensitive teenager neighbor of Anthony’s named Sunshine.

The second group of characters, Eunice and Bomber are introduced living forty years in the past. Their story opens on the same day that Theresa died, with Eunice, who had been unhappy with her job, walking down the street, past the bakery in front of which Theresa died, on her way to a job interview with Bomber. As she walks she discovers a small keepsake on the ground, which she picks up and takes with her. She arrives at the office of a small publishing company, where she meets the owner/publisher Bomber and his canine assistant Douglas. Eunice interviews for the job, Bomber hires her and they become the best of friends, working and taking vacations together for decades.

And the third group of characters, consists of the characters in each short story. The short stories are fascinating as they add backstories for each of the lost and found objects. For example, the second short story focuses on a puzzle piece found in the street. And readers then learn the story of Sisters Maud and Gladys. Maud was a spoiled child who never rose above her self-centered-I-am-the-center-of-the-universe ideology; fortunately, for her family, when she was a young woman she married a rich man and moved away. In contrast, Maud’s sister Gladys was a good girl and a good daughter to their parents, living with them and taking care of them as they aged. Readers learn that when the sisters parents died, they left their house to Gladys, with the stipulation that Maud could live there too if she ever needed to. And as Murphy’s Law stipulates – that is exactly what happened. Maud’s husband died unexpectedly, and she discovered there wasn’t a penny left in his estate; so she moved into the family home and upended Gladys’s quiet life; coming across like a self-centered hurricane. During that time, Maud’s one big ambition is to finish a huge puzzle. And resentful, and put-upon Gladys knows this, so she steals a piece of the puzzle and drops it in the road while she is out on a walk. Thus the puzzle piece is “lost” and Anthony subsequently finds it.

The basic gist of this fun, escapist tale, is that present-day Anthony was engaged to Theresa who died suddenly while standing outside a bakery, forty years ago. Just before Theresa’s death she gave Anthony the small keepsake she received at her first communion, and made him promise that he would always keep it safe. On the day Theresa died, a distracted Anthony had the keepsake in his pocket and lost it. Thus Anthony felt he broke his promise to Theresa; and in the aftermath of her death he started to pick up lost objects he discovered, on his walks and travels, with the intent to return them to their owners one day. Anthony dies shortly after the book opens and leaves his assistant Laura his house and his money; with only one caveat – she must return all the lost things he found to their rightful owners.

As you might expect, the tales of the present and past characters eventually merge, and the book comes full circle in two main senses; firstly, the book opens with the first of the ten short stories, describing how Anthony found a box of ashes on a train, and ends with the ashes being returned to the person who lost them, with an explanation of just whose ashes they are and why they are important to the person that lost them. And secondly, the romance and engagement of Anthony and Theresa is echoed in the eventual romance and engagement of Anthony’s assistant Laura and her beau Freddy, a couple who by the end of the book have overcome a few obstacles, and who are engaged and looking forward to their wedding just as Anthony and Theresa were many years before.

And in a nutshell those are the three sets of characters and an overview of the novel The Keeper of Lost Things.

The book was enjoyed by book club members; although several members made comment on the fact that the main female characters in the book Laura and Eunice, allowed themselves to play second fiddle to men; in Laura’s case Anthony and in Eunice’s case Bomber; and they would have liked to have seen those two female characters empowered without their futures being so tied to the wishes of and desires of, respectively, Anthony and Bomber.

In Laura’s case, the course of her life, during the book, is in large part dictated by the caveat Anthony placed in his will – she inherits his entire estate with the stipulation that she return the lost items Anthony found to their owners, and that turns out to be a full time job. And in Eunice’s case, the course of her life is directed by Boomer, as he is the love of her life, but he can’t love her back, so she accepts a subservient role as his office assistant to be near him and keep him in her life.

The author of the Keeper of Lost Things, Ruth Hogan, is female and is sixty years of age; so perhaps she didn’t intend for readers to see Laura and Eunice as being somewhat subservient to Anthony and Bomber. And one could also say that Laura and Eunice could have taken a different routes – Laura could have refused to accept Anthony’s estate with his stipulation regarding the lost items; and Eunice could have quit working with Bomber at some point, taken a job elsewhere and looked for love with someone else. And both women do grow during the story and become more empowered as individuals – though the subservient point is certainly a valid one.

Other than that one point, the book club members enjoyed the book and recommend it!

–End of Book Club Notes!

Hello everyone, just a quick reminder to let you know that our first in-person Adult Book Club meeting, in more than a year, is approaching!

The gathering is this Friday, August 13 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the library’s Conference Room (that is the room located in the back of the library, past the Reference Desk).

If you’re new to the book club, welcome! You can register for the August meeting by clicking on the following link:

Adult Book Club Online: “The Keeper of Lost Things: A Novel” by Ruth Hogan

On a pre-meeting note, the library now requires everyone to wear masks while attending programs in library meetings rooms. If you arrive at the library for our book club meeting on Friday, and don’t have a mask – let me know and I’ll get you one.

I hope to see everyone on Friday when will be discussing the lovely book The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan.

And looking to the future, here is a PDF listing our autumn reads

Have a great day everyone,
Linda

On A Final Future Note: The plan is to hold all future book club meetings at the library; unless things change with the Delta variant and we have to move back to doing the Book Club via Zoom; I’ll let you know if that turns out to be the case both via the blog, and if you’re previously registered for a book club meeting, via email.

Hi everyone, our June gathering will be via Zoom, on Friday, June 11, 2021 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

If you’ve previously signed up for a book club meeting, and thus I have your email address; you don’t need to sign up again. I will send you the Zoom link the first week in June.

If you’re new to the Southeast Steuben Count Library Adult Book Club – welcome! You can sign up on the library’s website by clicking the following link:

https://ssclibrary.org/activities/adult-book-club-before-coffee-cold/

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Our June read is Before The Coffee Gets Cold (208 pages) written by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

The book is available in print form through StarCat; and for instant checkout as an eBook or digital audiobook through the Hoopla Catalog found online at

https://www.hoopladigital.com/browse/ebook

You can also download the Hoopla app to your mobile device to read the eBook or listen to the digital audiobook version.

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Here is the publisher overview of the plot of Before The Coffee Gets Cold:

What would you change if you could travel back in time?

Down a small alleyway in the heart of Tokyo, there’s an underground café that’s been serving carefully brewed coffee for over a hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers its customers something else besides coffee-the chance to travel back in time.

The rules, however, are far from simple: you must sit in one particular seat, and you can’t venture outside the café, nor can you change the present. And, most important, you only have the time it takes to drink a hot cup of coffee-or risk getting stuck forever.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of traveling to another time: a heartbroken lover looking for closure, a nurse with a mysterious letter from her husband, a waitress hoping to say one last goodbye and a mother whose child she may never get the chance to know.

Heartwarming, wistful and delightfully quirky, Before the Coffee Gets Cold explores the intersecting lives of four women who come together in one extraordinary café, where the service may not be quick, but the opportunities are endless.

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May Book Club Notes:

The Adult Book Club meeting for May was held via Zoom from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. on Friday, May 14, 2021.

Our May Read was The Boy In The Field by Margot Livesey

The cliff notes overview of the book The Boy In The Field by Margot Livesey is:

Despite the title, the book really chronicles the experience of the three teenage Lang siblings: outgoing Zoe (age 16), studious Matthew (age 17) and artistic Duncan (age 13), who live in a tranquil, small village outside of the town where they attend school, with their father Hal, a blacksmith, and their mother Betsy a solicitor.

One day in September 1999, the sibling’s father promises to pick them up at school and forgets to do so.

So, the trio start walking home. As they walk by a field, bordered by a fence and bushes, Zoe sees something red in the field. Upon investigation, the siblings discover “The Boy” of the title, a youth they later learn is named Karel Lustig, lying beneath a tree in the field. Karel has been attacked by an unknown assailant and is unconscious.

The siblings realize that Karel needs help; so, the elder siblings, Zoe and Matthew, send the youngest Duncan to flag down a car for assistance. Once Duncan has finished his task he returns to his siblings and Karel, still lying unconscious in the field. The emergency crew arrive and take Karel to the hospital. The siblings go home, where later that evening they are visited by Police Inspector Price, who takes their statements regarding the incident and asks them not to discuss finding the boy in the field with anyone outside their household.

The story unfolds from there; the author paints a pleasing portrait of a family whose members genuinely care for each other and do their best to support each other through times easy and hard. The narrative starts out chronicling the experience of the siblings finding Karel in the field, together, and subsequent chapters follow each of the three siblings, in turn, in the aftermath of the event of finding the boy in the field. The story is indeed a Bildungsroman, as the impact of finding Karel in the field has the siblings in a contemplative mood in the months that follow, realizing there is evil in the world and sometimes people are treated abysmally for no good reason; while also, as teenagers do, trying to find where they fit in, in the world.

Readers also learn a bit more about “The Boy In The Field” himself, Karel Lustig by the end of the book; but as mentioned the book really isn’t his story; it is the story of three siblings who might live next door to any of us, and who they are impacted by a dark an unexpected event.

About The Writing: The author has something that is great for an author to have, the proverbial “way with words.” Her writing is descriptive and articulate without being packed with fluffy extraneous details; this is something the reader perceives from the first page of the book when she describes the sibling trio finding the Karel in the field  in this way: “Here is what happened one Monday in the month of September, in the last year of the last century;” “Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang were on their way home from school,” when they came upon the boy in the field.

The consensus of book club members is that the book The Boy In The Field is definitely worth reading, and several book club members were also interested in checking out additional titles by the author.

Margot Livesey’s current reading list:

Homework (1990)

Criminals (1996)

The Missing World (2000)

Eva Moves the Furniture (2001)

Banishing Verona (2004)

The House on Fortune Street (2008)

The Flight of Gemma Hardy (2012)

Mercury (2016)

The Boy in the Field (2020)

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Other Items Discussed At The May Book Club Gathering Via Zoom:

In discussing how one event, like finding an unconscious youth in a field, can impact, or even transform, one’s life; we discussed the Ben Franklin attributed proverb For Want of a Nail.

For Want of a Nail
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
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Other Books Recommended By Book Club Members:

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah: Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.

By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive.

In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa- like so many of her neighbors – must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family.

The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it – the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation. – Description from the publisher
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Sold on a Monday: A Novel by Kristina McMorris:  2 CHILDREN FOR SALE The sign is a last resort. It sits on a farmhouse porch in 1931, but could be found anywhere in an era of breadlines, bank runs and broken dreams. It could have been written by any mother facing impossible choices.

For struggling reporter Ellis Reed, the gut-wrenching scene evokes memories of his family’s dark past. He snaps a photograph of the children, not meant for publication. But when it leads to his big break, the consequences are more devastating than he ever imagined.

Inspired by an actual newspaper photograph that stunned the nation, Sold on a Monday is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and the unexpected paths that bring us home. – Description from the publisher
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Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr.: A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, by the bestselling author of The Black Church.

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked “a new birth of freedom” in Lincoln’s America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the “nadir” of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.

Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a “New Negro” to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age.

The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored “home rule” to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation.

An essential tour through one of America’s fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion’s mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.

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Recommended Viewing:

One Lane Bridge, Season 1 (Available on DVD and through Acorn TV):

More a character study than a mystery; set in New Zealand – and the scenery is great!

And here is the IMDB overview of the series:
During a murder investigation at Queenstown’s infamous One Lane Bridge, ambitious young Maori Detective, Ariki Davis, inadvertently reawakens a spiritual gift that endangers the case, his career and his life.

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References

Margot Livesey. (n.d.). Fantastic Fiction. Retrieved May 21, 2021, from https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/margot-livesey/

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Margot Livesey Professor Fiction. (n.d.). Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Retrieved April 21, 2021, from https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/people/margot-livesey

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Walsh, S. (2020, August 11). “Life is about change—whether we like it or not”: An Interview with Margot Livesey. Ploughshares. https://blog.pshares.org/life-is-about-change-whether-we-like-it-or-not-an-interview-with-margot-livesey/

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/margot-livesey/

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If you have questions about the book club, feel free to call the library at 607-936-3713 or send me an email to me at reimerl@stls.org

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, I apologize for the delay! I just realized today, the day of the April book club meeting, that I didn’t post the list of titles book club attendees recommended in March – so here is the list!

Book Club Attendees Other Recommend Reads

During our March meeting we discussed other books that members recommend and they include:

American Dervish: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar:

From Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar, a stirring and explosive debut novel about an American Muslim family in Michigan struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.

Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time. His normal life of school, baseball, and video games had previously been distinguished only by his Pakistani heritage and by the frequent chill between his parents, who fight over things he is too young to understand. Then Mina arrives, and everything changes.

American Dervish is a brilliantly written, nuanced, and emotionally forceful look inside the interplay of religion and modern life.

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The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.

When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the building block of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would.

Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned their curiosity into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions.

The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study the code of life.

Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids?

After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the

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The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

“Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.

“Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.

“A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).

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Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

A “wonderful novel” steeped in the folklore of the South from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Women of Brewster Place (The Washington Post Book World).

On an island off the coast of Georgia, there’s a place where superstition is more potent than any trappings of the modern world. In Willow Springs, the formidable Mama Day uses her powers to heal. But her great niece, Cocoa, can’t wait to get away.

In New York City, Cocoa meets George. They fall in love and marry quickly. But when she finally brings him home to Willow Springs, the island’s darker forces come into play. As their connection is challenged, Cocoa and George must rely on Mama Day’s mysticism.

Told from multiple perspectives, Mama Day is equal parts star-crossed love story, generational saga, and exploration of the supernatural. Hailed as Gloria Naylor’s “richest and most complex” novel, it is the kind of book that stays with you long after the final page (Providence Journal).

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Also recommended the non-profit website Living Room Conversations which was formed to, as aptly described on the site, offer  “a simple way to connect across divides – politics, age, gender, race, nationality, and more.:

Here is the website link: https://livingroomconversations.org/

Hope to see everyone at 3 p.m.!

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Update! The April Adult Book Club meeting is being pushed forward a week and will be held on Friday, April 16, 2021 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

And the change in date is due to the fact that I’m getting my second COVID shot on Friday, April 9, which is the original date of the April book club meeting, and as I know a number of people have experienced distracting symptoms after getting the second shot – I thought I’d reschedule the meeting, so I don’t find I need to cancel at the last moment!

As a reminder, the April book club read is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

If you have previously registered for an SSCL Adult Book Club meeting you’ll get an email with the link today (3/23) and a reminder email including the same link on Monday, April 5.

If you’ve just discovered this blog and would like to register for the April SSCL Adult Book Club, here is the link, which will direct you to the registration page on the Southeast Steuben County Library website:

Adult Book Club Online: “The Vanishing Half: A Novel” by Brit Bennett

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I know moving the April meeting forward a week, will leave us less time before the May 14 Adult Book Club meeting; however, the May read, The Boy In The Field by Margot Livesey is relatively short – just 272 pages – so I’m sure we can all read that title in the three weeks in between meetings.

And as usual, if you find you can’t get a copy of the book club selection of the month, let me know and I’ll make sure you get a copy.

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And here are the Cliff Notes Takes on the February & March reads!

Cliff Notes Take on the February Read:

The February SSL Adult Book Club Selection was Ruth Ware’s One By One. The book is an intriguing thriller set at an isolated French chalet. As the story opens readers meet the two chalet staff members, Erin and Danny, who are getting ready to host the staff of an app company called Snoops The app allows music fans to listen, in real time, to whatever music other Snoop members, both famous and non-famous, are listening to in real time. The Snoops staff includes stockholders Eva, Topher, Rik & Liz and several support staff. Just after the Snoop crew arrives for their business vacation, Eva holds a meeting and announces that they have a buy-out offer that she is eager to accept; not all stockholders wish to sell the company and some, including Topher, are outraged that Eva has been in negotiation for a buy-out without telling the other stockholders. As the story progresses Eva suffers a suspicious “accident,” an avalanche partially buries the chalet leaving group stranded together and cut off from the rest of the world; and as murder ensues, readers discover that not all characters are quite who they seem to be.

The consensus of book club members was that One By One was an interesting thriller, with compelling characters and a story reminiscent of the works of Agatha Christie.

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Cliff Notes Take of the March Read:

The March SSCL Adult Book Club read was Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar.

Ayad Akhtar book is fiction, on the real-life experiences of Ayad, a first generation American and his family. In the book, the main character is also called Ayad Akhtar, and he is the only child of Pakistani immigrants Sikander and Fatima Akhtar. The book explores the world-view of Ayad who is American born and his Pakistani born parents, Sikander and Fatima; interspersing  experiences the trio has had during their lives and as they traverse the discriminatory climate in the U.S. Readers learn that Akhtar’s mother Fatima, despite always longing to return to Pakistan to live, experienced the horrors of war at a young age, and that Akhta’s father, who during the story works as  both as an academic and a practicing cardiologist, meets a fictional Donald Trump when that character is suffering from cardiac issues, and that despite experiencing discrimination as an immigrant, Sikander supports Donald Trump through all the years insisting that he is a good man and even voting or him; this despite evidence that indicates that the fictional Donald Trump is a racist.

The experiences of the main character, Ayad, are also relayed including how his college studies, particularly under his favorite Professor Mary Maroni have influenced his life and how his worldview has changed over time. There are also stories of how Ayed, an American citizen, must deal with discrimination, including an incident, in the aftermath of 9/11, when Ayed’s car breaks down and encounters a bigoted white police officer and his car-repair shop owning uncle who cheats Ayed by charging him an exorbitant amount to fix his car simply because both the nephew and uncle do not like that Ayed’s family comes from Pakistan.

Home Elegies is an enlightening read that follows several immigrant characters and one first-generation American, Ayed, who when asked while giving a Q&A following an academic lecture, near the end of the book, that if he thinks it is so difficult to live in America – then why does he stay? And he sums up a main theme of the book with his reply “I’m here because I was born and raised here. This is where I’ve lived my whole life. For better, for worse– and it’s always been a bit of both– I don’t want to be anywhere else. I’ve never even thought about it, America is my home.”

The book club members agreed Homeland Elegies is an excellent read. Highly recommend.

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Have a great day everyone,

Linda