July Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom:  Friday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m.

Our July read is Where The Crawdad’s Sing by Delia Owens

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August Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom: Friday, August 13 at 3:00 p.m. (Note the time change back to our original 3:00 p.m.)

Our August read is The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

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September Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom: Friday, September 11 at 3:00 p.m.

Our September read is The Tenth Muse: A Novel by Catherine Chung:

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October Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom: Friday, October 9 at 3:00 p.m.

Our October read is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

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November Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom: Friday, November 13, 2020 at 3:00 p.m.

Our November read is The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

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December Adult Book Club Gathering via Zoom, Friday, December 11 at 3:00 p.m.

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

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You can register for upcoming book club (Zoom) gatherings by either sending an email to me at: REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Or clicking on the book club title for each month, found on the programs calendar on the second Friday of each month, on the library’s website à https://www.ssclibrary.org/activities/

Have a great day everyone,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, The next SSCL Adult Book Club will be held, via Zoom, on Friday, July 10 at 2:00 p.m.

Our July read is Where The Crawdad’s Sing by Delia Owens

If you’ve registered for previous Adult Book Club gatherings, you’ll receive an email with the Zoom link for July.

If you’re new to the SSCL Adult Book Club, welcome! You can sign up for the July Book Club by going to the calendar page on the library’s website, found via the following link:

Online! Adult Book Club: “Where The Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens

And on to the May Adult Book Club Notes!

May Selection: We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter: There are twelve short stories in this collection, plus a bonus story titled Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, which features the author ruminating on what the stats say about his hometown of Spokane, Washington. The short stories all focus on challenged male characters, most of whom have made monumentally bad choices in their lives; and who come to realize that no matter what they do that cannot completely overcome those choices. The stories are a bit stark, but feature well written characters, and offer a glimpse at how some of the poorer members of our society live.

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Anything Helps: A story about Bit, a homeless man who has been kicked out of a shelter because he didn’t adhere to the rules. Bit is an experienced panhandler whose sign says, “Anything Helps.” Bit uses the money he has obtained by working at the homeless shelter and panhandling, to buy a book for his son who is in foster care. Bit wants to give his son the book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, as a belated birthday gift. When Bit  takes the book to the boy’s foster home and asks to see his son, his son’s foster parents tell him that if he comes to their house again, they will call the police. And as Bit is walking away from the house, his son rides up on a bike and they talk. The boy has already read the book during summer camp the previous year, and is obviously doing very well living with his foster parents. In the aftermath of the meeting, Bit realizes he can’t really make up for not being there for his son and that the boy is better of with his foster parents – which is a bitter pill to swallow.

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We Live in Water: The title story relates the tale of a father and son in two time period. Opening in 1958, a small-town crook and philanderer name Oren Dessen is driving a car with his young son Michael sitting the backseat. Oren gained custody of his son so he could save on making alimony payments to his ex-wife. And it turns out that Oren is in trouble! Oren has both stolen money from a prominent local crook named Bannen, and had an affair with Banne’s wife. Oren misreads the situation and believes he can go see Bannen and smooth everything over. So, he arranges to meet with Bannen at a roadhouse, and leaves Michael in the car when he goes in to talk to Bannen. Things go south very quickly, Oren is beaten and his belief in his own ability to talk his way out of the situation is shattered. Oren realizes if he doesn’t escape from the roadhouse, he is a dead man. So, he manages to break out of the bar and as he is running, he realizes

A. His son Michael is still in his car in the roadhouse parking lot
B. That he loves his son and
C. That if he doesn’t go back to the roadhouse, Bannen may harm or kill Michael in retaliation for Oren’s actions

So, Oren goes back and gives himself up to Bannen and his men, saving his son but losing his life.

Years later a grown Michael, also a philanderer with a failed marriage, returns to that same town looking for his father and, although he doesn’t find his father, he does realize just how much his behavior, running around with other women and losing his family, is due to both to his past and his self-centered behavior as an adult.

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Thief: Thief relays the story of Wayne, a working-class guy, who lives with his wife and three kids in a middle-class neighborhood, in the nineteen seventies. Wayne’s family keeps a large aquarium sized change jar, where he puts his spare change at the end of each day so the saved money can be used for a family vacation every other year or so. And Wayne has discovered, one of his three kids has started to regularly take a few coins out of the family’s vacation jar.

Wayne obsesses over the theft of the coins, wanting to know which of his kids is swiping the money, and fuming over the question of how one of his kids is capable of stealing from their family.

So, to discover who the thief is, Wayne hides in his house, when his kids think he is at work, and waits to see if he can catch the thief. While he is hiding alone in his darkened bedroom, waiting for the thief to make an appearance, he recalls when he was a kid and stole twenty cents from his family’s vacation fund jar; for they saved money for vacations in the same manner the adult Wayne’s family does. And when Wayne’s parents took their family on a vacation the summer after he stole the twenty cents from his childhood vacation jar, he was frightened during the entire trip, desperately concerned that his family would run out of money before they returned home. Thus, Wayne determined never to steal anything again. And all these years later, Wayne is sitting in his bedroom with the lights off, remembering that childhood incident, how scared he was about the theft of two dimes, and, pondering why that old fear has made him so determined to catch one of his children in the act of taking a couple of coins for a jar. In the end, Wayne hears the door to his room open and someone taking coins from the vacation jar, but does not look to see which of his children is the pocket-change thief.

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Can a Corn: Can a Corn is the story of step-son Tommy trying to take his step-father Ken from the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility, with the intent to drop him off for dialysis and then later pick him up and return him to the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility.

Tommy picks Ken up and as they are riding in the car, Ken says he doesn’t want to go for dialysis, instead, he wants to go fishing. Tommy says no to that request, but as Tommy stops the car for a red light, Ken grabs a fishing pole from the back seat, gets out of the car and walks toward the Spokane River looking for a good spot to fish. Tommy drives his truck down the road, driving beside Kevin, and tells him to get back in the truck so he can take him to his dialysis appointment. Ken wants no part of the appointment, he insists he wants to fish. An exasperated Tommy drives away, leaving Ken on his own, and goes back to his auto repair shop. Once back at work, Tommy decides that if Ken really wants to fish at this late stage of his life, he should fish. So, Tommy drives backs toward the river, gets out of his truck and walks with his tackle box looking for Ken. He finds Ken fishing under a bridge. Tommy properly sets up the pole for Ken and they hang out while fishing until it is time for Ken to go back to the Pine Lodge Correctional Facility.

The final gist of the story being that Ken is a dying old man, and Tommy decided if he wanted to fish, while he still had the strength to do so, that should be his call even though Ken wasn’t a top-notch step-father.

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Virgo: Virgo tells a sad story of mental illness. The story focuses on Trent, who came from a challenged background and who recently was kicked out of his apartment by his girlfriend Tanya. Shortly after Trent moved out of Tanya’s apartment, he becomes obsessed with her and her new boyfriend Mark, who was also Tanya’s old boyfriend. Trent sits outside her apartment building and watches Tanya and Mark, only to be issued a restraining order. He obsesses over the fact that Tanya doesn’t want him and prefers Mark; then he retaliates by publishing sinister horoscopes for the paper where he works as an editor, because he knows Tanya reads her newspaper horoscope every day. And when Trent finds out Tanya is going to marry Mark, he goes to her apartment building, sits in his car where he can see the entrance, and then, when he sees Tanya and Mark walking down the street, he runs them down with his car leading to tragedy for all concerned.

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Helpless Little Things: A con man who has more than one-scheme in the works, recruits two young adults to help him run a scam accepting donations for Greenpeace, when in fact the money is all going back to the con man. The con-man’s two youthful Greenpeace scammers are Kevin and Julie. Kevin is smooth and gregarious and is good at getting people to donate money. And at first Julie, with her earnest manner, is better at getting money than Kevin, stellular in fact. And then, after the con man does a strip search of both Kevin and Julie to make sure they are not coning him out of money, Julie seems to lose confidence and takes in much less money.

In the end, the biggest con is inflicted on the con man himself, as Julie has learned the con game too well, and cons him out of his Christmas time profits and disappears. The con man humorously appreciates Julie’s skill in coning him and carries on with his life. A short time later one of the con man’s distributor’s rats him out and he is busted and goes to jail.

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Please: Tommy goes to his ex-wife Carla’s house to pick up their son, sends the boy out to his truck and has a chat with Carla about the fact that although he is supposed to have custodial visits with their son every Saturday, this is the first time in three weeks that Carla has been home so Tommy can see their son. Carla replies that she’d been visiting her parents and they had pleaded with her to prolong her visit.
As Tommy is leaving, he looks over at Carla’s boyfriend Jeff who is sitting on the sofa staring at the TV and says to Carla that he looks “chalked up.” Carla denies this and says Jeff is fine.
When Tommy gets out to his car and talks to his son, he realizes t Carla lied to him, when she said that she’d been visiting her parents, and he also realizes from the story his son tells him, that wasn’t at his grandparent’s house but instead went with Carla, Jeff and a group of people to grocery stores where the stole cold medicines assumedly to make meth.

When Tommy takes his son back to Carla’s house, he has the boy wait in the car, while he goes in to talk to Carla and Jeff. He shoves Jeff against the wall and tells him – that he is not to take his son on any future con artist jobs. Tommy then turns to leave and says to Carla “Leave the kid with me if you’re gonna do that sit.” And Walter’s ends the story with this – “And then he said –Please.”

So, Tommy is forceful but polite in dealing with Carla and Jeff, which in a reading between the lines sort of way indicates Tommy is insecure on some level.

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Don’t Eat Cat: This one is a post-apocalyptic tale, set in the not too distant future, at a time when a person’s genetic profile determines, by government edict, whether or not that person can have a child or receive medical treatment; and at a time when scores of people are so depressed that they have have become addicted to a mind numbing drug called Replexen, which soothes away their depression along with most of their intelligence.

The Replexen addicts, nicknamed zombies, are no longer capable of doing high skilled jobs and are, instead, re-trained to do low skill jobs with middling success.

The story opens with the protagonist ordering a soy latte at a Starbucks where two “zombies” are working, one a cashier, named Brando, and another a coffee clerk who is supposed to make the specialty coffee drinks. The manager is a regular human, and it becomes apparent that the cashier can’t figure out how to use the computer to enter the order for a soy latte and the coffee clerk can’t manage to make a latte. The manager tries to help, the patrons gets impatient as they’re waiting during the rush hour and the protagonist shouts at the coffee clerk, who is burning his latte and then both Brando and the girl steaming the latte, lose it and chaos ensues as Brando tries to strangle the store manager. The police come and restrain Brando.

Then the protagonist then remembers his girlfriend Marci who left him, took Replexen, and went to live in the zombie part of town, Z-Town, so she too could escape the dark and stressful world they live in. At the end of the tale, the protagonist has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, denied treatment by the government and he escapes to Z-Town and takes refuge with a girl he knows isn’t Marci but that with the help of the mind-numbing Replexen he knows he’ll believe is Marci.

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The New Frontier: Nick, who has recently failed the bar exam and whose past includes a recent divorce after both he and his ex-wife cheated on each other, accompanies his high school friend, Bobby Rausch, to Las Vegas to search for Bobby’s step-sister Lisa. Bobby believes Lisa is prostitute in Las Vegas, based on a playing card he received with her photo, indicating she could be purchased for the evening, and he is determined to find her and rescue her from that lifestyle. Once in Vegas, Nick gambles each day, and then in the evening he accompanies Bobby as they halfheartedly search clubs for Lisa.

Narrator Nick reminisces to himself about the time he lost his virginity to Lisa during high school, and eventually decides that the trip is pointless as they are never going to find Lisa by simply asking around. He tells Bobby, he’s going home and shares the fact that he came on the trip because Lisa was the first girl he ever slept with. But before the Nick leaves town, he remembers Lisa’s mother’s maiden name and simply finds Lisa by looking her up in the phone book. Nicks meets with Lisa and discovers that A. She’s never been a stripper or prostitute but did pose for one of those raunchy cards for a former boyfriend who was a photographer and B. that her mother and Bobby’s father split up because Bobby became obsessed with her. It is revealed that Lisa slept with Bobby when she was twelve, their parents found out and took them to counseling. However, Bobby never got over the fact that Lisa didn’t want him. So, he beat up Lisa’s high school boyfriends and stalked her to such a degree that their parents divorced, and Lisa got a restraining order against Bobby. Thus, Nick decides not to tell Bobby where Lisa is, he only relays to his friend that she is fine.

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The Brakes: A story about one of Walter’s favorite characters Tommy, who as the story opens is driving away from his stepfather Ken’s funeral. Tommy’s young son is in the car with him and asks him questions about his stepfather which Tommy answers with the politically correct answers, while thinking just the opposite. Tommy takes his son back to work with him at his auto repair shop, and finds an old “racist lady” has brought her car in again to have the breaks repaired, and she doesn’t remember that she brought the car in for the same work a week ago. Tommy calls the obnoxious, racist old lady’s niece because he is concerned about her and the niece says, “Senile old bitch” and hangs up. Tommy’s crew have previously, and with his approval, changed the women for work that wasn’t needed or done – and this time Tommy, pondering right from wrong, decides they are not going to do that anymore and tells his staff member Andy that if he tries to cheat the woman now or in the future, that Tommy will call the police. The story ends with Tommy sitting down next to his son and saying “You know it doesn’t matter who your mom marries, right? I ain’t going nowhere.” The gist of the story being Tommy’s reflecting on what is right, wrong and how important it is to be there for your kids, in the aftermath of Ken’s funeral.

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The Wolf and the Wild: Opens with a group of prisoners picking up trash along the highway. Wade McAdam, an embezzler, is the somewhat self-destructive protagonist – he is notably a white collar criminal with a great deal of money in the bank. Wade was arrested for embezzlement, and in the aftermath, wound up in jail, divorced with his kids shunning him and tasked with doing community service and going for group therapy. Wade is released after sixteen months, gets an apartment and participates in a new community service program reading books to kids four hours a day for four days a week, alternating working with sophomores and second graders.

Drew, a second grader, brings the same book for Wayne to read each time, The Wolf and the Wild. And when Wade asks him if he doesn’t want to read another book Drew says, “But I don’t know what’s in those other books.” To which Wade replies “Isn’t that the fun, finding out?” “Drew looked dubious.” The last five pages of the book are blank and show a boy walking through the woods and eventually, when he meets his friend the wolf, laying down and resting with his head on the wolf. Drew doesn’t want to read any other books and keeps trying to sit on Wade’s lap, which is not allowed. Even so Drew bonds with Wade, and at the end of the story, Wade has Drew sitting on his lap while reading a book and the teacher and vice principal are walking toward them to terminate their relationship, and Wayne is in trouble yet again.

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Wheelbarrow Kings: Daryl, is homeless, hungry and dreaming of a meal of fish and chips. Daryl’s friend Mitch knows a guy who just bought a TV and is game to give him the old one so he can sell it. Mitch tells Daryl he’ll give him half the proceeds if he helps him take the TV to the pawn shop. Daryl and Mitch are given the TV to dispose of and then steal a wheelbarrow to transport the heavy TV to a pawn shop as it is too heavy to cart blocks on foot. The homeless pair struggle to take the TV to the pawn shop, only to discover when they get  to the shop, that the TV is too old, and the pawn shop won’t buy it. The pawn shop owner instead wants to buy the wheelbarrow – and they get $15 for the wheelbarrow and for the pawn shop owner taking the old TV off their hands. And $15, split between to friends, isn’t enough to buy a real meal for both of them, never mind the fish and chips Daryl has been craving.

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Statistical Abstract for My Hometown: Author Jess Walter offers his take on what the statistics say about his hometown of Spokane, Washington.

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And those are the Book Club Notes for May 2020!

Have a great day everyone,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, the June Adult Book club meeting will be held tomorrow, Friday, June 12, starting at 2:00 p.m.

The June Book Club Selection Is: We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter

Book Club Review: From Booklist *Starred Review* This is the first collection of short stories, all of which have appeared previously in Harper’s and McSweeney’s, among other literary publications, from the much-acclaimed, best-selling Walter (Beautiful Ruins, 2012). With their visceral depictions of the homeless, the bereft, and the marginalized, often presented with a signature blend of wicked humor and heartbreaking tenderness, Walter’s intense stories speak directly to the contemporary American experience. In “Anything Helps,” a homeless father has lost his wife to a heroin overdose and his son to social services. Determined to buy the latest Harry Potter novel for his son, he brings a practiced eye to his begging, opting to go “to cardboard.” In the title story, Walter expertly uses the tropes of crime fiction to tell the grim story of an unrepentant gambler who steals from the wrong person, and his young son, who is forever haunted by his father’s disappearance. In “Don’t Eat Cat,” Walter turns to zombie fiction to unleash a hilarious satire of political correctness (“I’m not one of those reactionaries, but hiring zombies for food service? I just think that’s wrong”). Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking fiction from a prodigiously talented writer. –Joanne Wilkinson for Booklist

To Sign Up for the June Book Club: You can sign up for the June book club gathering by emailing me at REIMERL@STLS.ORG or, by filling out the short online registration form via the following link https://www.ssclibrary.org/activities/bookclub_we_live_in_water/

Hope to see you via Zoom tomorrow!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, before I get started with the notes for the May meeting, our June meeting info is:

Book Club Title: We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter

Book Club Review: From Booklist *Starred Review* This is the first collection of short stories, all of which have appeared previously in Harper’s and McSweeney’s, among other literary publications, from the much-acclaimed, best-selling Walter (Beautiful Ruins, 2012). With their visceral depictions of the homeless, the bereft, and the marginalized, often presented with a signature blend of wicked humor and heartbreaking tenderness, Walter’s intense stories speak directly to the contemporary American experience. In “Anything Helps,” a homeless father has lost his wife to a heroin overdose and his son to social services. Determined to buy the latest Harry Potter novel for his son, he brings a practiced eye to his begging, opting to go “to cardboard.” In the title story, Walter expertly uses the tropes of crime fiction to tell the grim story of an unrepentant gambler who steals from the wrong person, and his young son, who is forever haunted by his father’s disappearance. In “Don’t Eat Cat,” Walter turns to zombie fiction to unleash a hilarious satire of political correctness (“I’m not one of those reactionaries, but hiring zombies for food service? I just think that’s wrong”). Wildly entertaining and thought-provoking fiction from a prodigiously talented writer. –Joanne Wilkinson for Booklist

Date & Time of Meeting: Friday, June 10, 2020 at 2:00 p.m.

How to Sign Up for the June Book Club: You can sign up for the June book club gathering by emailing me at REIMERL@STLS.ORG or, by filling out the short online registration form via the following link https://www.ssclibrary.org/activities/bookclub_we_live_in_water/

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May Book Club Notes:

Our May 2020 Book Club read was Teá Obreht’s second novel Inland.

To sum it up, the book follows two characters, Nora Lark a thirty-seven-year-old housewife living in Amargo in the Arizona territory in 1893, and Lurie Mattie a wanted man and cameleer.

Nora’s story is told in the third person and Lurie’s in the first person. And the reader eventually realizes that Lurie is telling his story to his camel Burke, seemingly from the afterlife. Nora’s story unfolds during one day in 1893, whereas Lurie’s journey is followed from the 1850s to 1893.

The book has two big threads, one being time and the other being want. In this case “want” meaning a need or desire for something.

The cliff notes version of Nora’s story is that she is at the family home, outside the town of Amargo, Arizona Territory. There is a drought, the Lark family is almost out of water and Nora mentions numerous times during her story her desire (want) for water. Nora’s husband, newspaper editor Emmett Lark, has gone to find the water merchant and was due back with water days ago. And Nora’s two eldest sons, Rob & Dolan, who are supposed to be getting the weekly newspaper printed have disappeared from the newspaper shop. Thus Nora, is waiting for Emmett’s return, looking after their youngest son Toby, Emmett’s mother and Emmett’s clairvoyant cousin Josie, while wondering where her missing sons and husband might be.

Meanwhile, Toby & Josie insist that they have seen a monster on the property and Nora does not believe them. Also of note, Nora talks to her long-dead first-born child, a daughter named Evelyn who it seems for most of the book is a figment of her imagination.

The cliff notes version of Lurie’s story is that he is introduced to the reader as a young immigrant child in the 1850s. He loses his father to illness shortly after they arrive in America, realizes he is clairvoyant and can see ghosts, stays with the landlady of the boarding house he and his father were living in after his father dies, is later sold to a man who turns out to be a grave robber, escapes from detention on a farm with brothers Hobb & Donovan Mattie and goes on a robbing spree with the Mattie Brothers.

While working with the Mattie Brothers Lurie inadvertently kills a young man in a fight and is followed down subsequent years by a sheriff determined to right that wrong. Toward the end of his tenure with the Mattie Brothers, the younger Mattie brother Hobb dies. And Lurie ingests Hobb’s want/desire to rob and is forever after stealing small objects to appease Hobb. A short time after Hobb dies, Lurie winds up in ill health and Donovan leaves him – leaving him only his (Donovan’s) canteen full of water.

Lurie recovers his health, discovers camels and his love for them and joins the U.S. Camel Corps, led by a man named Jolly. Then one day, the Camel Corps arrives in a town where they have just hung a notorious criminal. Lurie goes to the town square where the hanging occurred and discovers Donovan’s ghost whose want is thirst; so Lurie takes on Donovan’s desire for water and keeps adding water from rivers he passes to the canteen Donovan gave him before they parted. Lurie is eventually forced to leave his companions in the camel corps when the sheriff who is hunting him gets too close. When he leaves, he takes his best friend and confident, a camel names Burke, with him.

At this point, I should mention that Lurie’s need (want) evolves during the story and it is that someone should remember the things he has seen in his life – that they should not be forgotten.

Years go by, and Lurie is surprised to encounter his old camel corps leader and friend Jolly again. At first it seems Lurie might stay in the same town Jolly lives in with his wife, but eventually Lurie & Jolly hear of wild camels nearby and the call of the trail and adventure reaches them. Lurie & Jolly find the wild camels and then begin a camel shipping business, carting water and other items to where they can be sold. Subsequently they join a geological survey team that offers them money to go with them, and cart water a long way on camel back, to their survey site. Once at the site, Jolly and Lurie begin to suspect that they will never get paid. So Jolly steals one of the large black rocks (probably a piece of Obsidian) found at the site thinking they can sell it. They try to sell the black rock and the word gets out they stole the rock, and they are tracked down by a group of people who can’t believe the rock they have is what was stolen, as it doesn’t appear to be worth much. Lurie & Jolly get away from the men and separate, Jolly goes home, and Lurie and Burke go on. Shortly after they part, Lurie is accosted by another group of men looking for that same not-so-precious stone and they don’t believe him when he says he doesn’t have it. He is shot in the leg while trying to get away from them and is then tied tightly to Burke’s saddle.

Then after the many years we’ve followed Lurie & Burke and we’ve gotten to the evening of Nora’s story, their stories collide. The “monster” that Nora’s son Toby and cousin Josie insist they have seen is actually an aged and partially blind Burke the camel who has obviously been fending for himself for many years, Burke still carries the remains of the long-dead Lurie tied to his back. It is implied that the ghost of Evelyn drew Burke and the ghost of Lurie to the Lark homestead. And Nora, for safety reasons, and taking pity on the aged camel, shoots Burke – and the desire that Burke and Lurie have felt, wanting to be buried together takes place; but not before Nora has discovered Donovan’s old canteen, drunk of the water within and received mental images of the places Lurie had been in his life. She also sees the future, a future where she has sold the family newspaper to the rich, demanding Merrion Crace to get her two elder sons out of trouble, a future with a grown and prospering Toby and one in which her son Rob married her cousin Josie.

All in all, Inland was quite a read!

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Other Book Recommendations by Club Attendees:

This month the following books were recommended by book club members

The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman: Philip Pullman returns to the parallel world of His Dark Materials–Malcolm Polstead and his daemon, Asta, are used to overhearing news and the occasional scandal at the inn run by his family. But during a winter of unceasing rain, Malcolm finds a mysterious object—and finds himself in grave danger.

Inside the object is a cryptic message about something called Dust; and it’s not long before Malcolm is approached by the spy for whom this message was actually intended. When she asks Malcolm to keep his eyes open, he begins to notice suspicious characters everywhere: the explorer Lord Asriel, clearly on the run; enforcement agents from the Magisterium; a gyptian named Coram with warnings just for Malcolm; and a beautiful woman with an evil monkey for a daemon. All are asking about the same thing: a girl—just a baby—named Lyra.

Lyra is at the center of a storm, and Malcolm will brave any peril, and make shocking sacrifices, to bring her safely through it.

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The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout: Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

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Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

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Holes by Louis Sachar: Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.

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House of Sprits by Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.

One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate.

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Mosaic: A Novel by Joseph Catalano: In the early 1980s, two mosaics purchased by Art Termini from the Vatican Mosaic Studio in Rome were stolen from his home on Titan Court in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. The FBI, along with local and state police, tried in vain to find the thief. Mosaic is a novel based on a true story. Art Termini grew up in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward, a Sicilian enclave in the heart of the city.

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The Tiger’s Wife by Teá Obreht: Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.

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Note: Plot descriptions are from the publishers

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SSCL Book Blogs:

The Adult Book Club hosted by our very own book club host, Linda Reimer, features info on upcoming book club meetings, monthly reading titles and the monthly meeting notes – it is found at https://ssclbook.club/

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SSCL Book & Tech Talk is hosted by SSL librarian Linda Reimer and features a few tech tips but mostly focuses on Readers and Viewers advisory for those looking for something new to read or watch. The Book & Tech Talk blog can be found at https://sscltech.com/

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STORY MUSING is a blog hosted by our Adult Services Director, Michelle Wells. Michelle for short reviews on anything from books to movies to music. Check it out weekly for new ideas for what to read, watch or listen to. Story Musings is found at http://storymusing.blogspot.com/

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Be well & have a good day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi, thanks for signing up for the May Adult Book Club program!

On Friday, May 8 at 2:00 p.m. we will be meeting, via Zoom, to discuss the novel Inland by Téa Obreht.

Looking forward to June, our next book club selection is We Live in Water Stories by Jess Walter. The June Adult Book Club meeting, also being held via Zoom, is scheduled for Friday, June 12, start time: 2:00 p.m.

If you register for the May book club, I will send you the Zoom link for the June book club program the first week of June.

And patrons will, shortly, be able to register for the June book club meeting too through the library’s website. You can register for the May 8 book club via the following link (and the June book club when the calendar is updated)  https://www.ssclibrary.org/activities/

Additionally, information on upcoming book club meetings, and a summary of items discussed during each monthly book club meeting can be found on the SSCL Adult Book Club blog https://ssclbook.club/

And if you have questions please free to contact me! My email address is REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Have a good day,

Linda

Hi everyone, here are the notes from our April Book Club meeting.

The SSC Library Adult Book Club met, via Zoom, on Friday, April 10, 2020.

We discussed our April read, Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. The author packs quite a bit into the 192-page book. The book has several major themes, it is a coming of age story, a learning how to deal, or not deal, with loss story, the story of young black girls growing up in a changing Brooklyn in the 1970s, a story of childhood friendship; and how those formative friendships sometimes don’t survive the transition from childhood into adulthood; and it a story that emphasizes how important memories our in our lives.

The story chronicles the experiences of August, who as the book opens, is introduced as an anthropologist in her thirties who has come back to Brooklyn to bury her father and assist in clearing out his apartment. She has a meal with her brother at a dinner after their father’s funeral, and then heads to the subway to go back to her father’s apartment and runs into a former childhood friend, Sylvia. And it is this brief encounter with a former friend that she does not want to see, that triggers her remembrances of her childhood. August’s remembrances of two major things weave the threads of the book together, the first is her inability as a child to remember her mother’s death, and the second, consists of the memories she has of her close childhood friendship with three girls – Sylvia, Gigi and  Angela.

Woodson’s story isn’t completely linear. At the beginning of the book we meet the adult August and then the story flashes back to her youth with the ghost of her mother’s death hanging over the story.

August remembers moving to Brooklyn with her father and brother when she was eleven years old. And she remembers that she was born in SweetGrove, Tennessee and as a young child lived with her parents and younger brother in a run-down house on land her mother’s family owned. August’s maternal uncle, Clyde, was a frequent visitor and it was clear that Clyde and his sister, August’s mother, were close. Clyde was drafted, went to Vietnam, and was killed in combat. And the loss of her brother was something August’s mother could not accept. For most of the book the reader gets the impression that August’s mother is dead, but it is only in the last chapter of the book that we get conformation of that fact; when August remembers a trip she took at age 16 with her father and brother to the old family home in SweetGrove, during which she seemed to finally remember that her mother committed suicide by walking into the water of the small lake on the property.

And of her friendship with her close childhood friends, August remembers that soon after arriving in Brooklyn, she met and formed a friendship with three other girls, Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi. The girls took comfort from their friendship, hanging out with each other during the day at school and after school too, and supported each other to the hilt. They took shelter from life’s difficulties together, and then began to drift apart when two of the girls were sent private schools, Gigi to a performing arts school, and Sylvia to a Catholic school. The final spike that broke apart their friendship occurred when August was 15 and Sylvia took up with the boyfriend August had recently broken up with, a betrayal August could not, and cannot forgive, even as an adult when she encounters Sylvia in a subway station.

So, it is loss, and the remembrances of events that are the foundation pillars of the book. It seems that the remembrances of the childhood losses of her mother and her friends and the inability of August to overcome them, have greatly impacted the course of her life.

And indeed, those losses began to impact the course of her life when she was a youth.

The loss of her mother and the loss of her close friends, soaked August to the bone, from an emotional point of view, and she has not been able to move on from those losses and establish new, close relationships with others.

We see this in the glimpses we have of August as an adult, an anthropologist who takes refuge in her work, who studies cultural death rituals, who lives an academic based nomadic lifestyle and has had many lovers but never yet married or had children of her own. In the way she couldn’t remember her mother’s death until she was 16 and visited the old family property in SweetGrove, and in the way she couldn’t manage to stop and talk to her old friend Sylvia in the subway station after her father’s funeral. These points indicate that August is trying to avoid the deeper connections that close friends and family offer in this life to avoid the pain of loss. One might hope that August will grow and mature, and by her forties, perhaps she will branch out and find the deep joy that close relationships with family and friends brings. Perhaps one day Woodson will write a sequel and we will find out!

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The next Adult Book Club will be held, via Zoom, on Friday, May 8, start time: 2:00 p.m. Send me an email and I’ll send you the Zoom link on Monday, May 4, 2020.

My email address is: REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Hope to “see” everyone on May 8 and stay well everyone!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, the April book discussion will be held, via Zoom, this Friday, April 10.

Start time is 2:00 p.m.

We’ll be discussing the book Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.

If you’d like to attend the meeting, please send me an email and I’ll send  you the Zoom meeting information.

Be well!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

email: REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Hi everyone, the library has purchased a subscription to the video service Zoom.

And that means that we can actually have an interactive conversation about the next book club read, Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson!

In order to do so though, I have to send a Zoom link to the email address of all book club members.

And as no one wants to share their personal email with all of the Internet, unless it is a work email like mine! I need everyone to send me their email address And then next Thursday afternoon, I’ll send a link out to everyone who has sent me their email address and on Friday you’ll just click on the link in the email to be connected to the book club meeting.

We’ll connect at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 10, instead of our usual 3 p.m.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

I do check my email numerous times during the day.

And my email address is:

REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Be well everyone,
Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, our next book club title is

Another Brooklyn, written by Jacqueline Woodson.

Here’s a description of the book:

Longlisted for the National Book Award

The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award—winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years.

Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them.

But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion.

Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

I’m hoping we can connect through the blog and share our impressions of the book!

And on a logistics note, the library will be closed until at least April 13.

So, what I’m going to do is finish reading Another Brooklyn and then have a book talk ready for Friday, April 10. I’m not sure at the present time if I’ll be doing the talk through Skype and sending the live video feed to the blog or if I’ll need to use YouTube and prerecord the talk – but I will figure that our shortly and let you all know!

If anyone wishes to discuss the last book club book, Talking With Strangers, or any other or book, audiobook or video they are currently enjoying – please feel free to share by commenting on this blog!

And if anyone would like to listen to the Another Brooklyn audiobook, I see it is currently (2/24/2020 at 12:02 p.m.) available in the Digital Catalog (Libby/OverDrive apps). Check it out!

Happy reading everyone!

Linda

P.S. If you haven’t used the Digital Catalog and need assistance in downloading the app and/or checking out materials, please let me know – just send an email to me at REIMERL@STLS.ORG

Hi, everyone, for a relatively short book of 346 pages, author Malcolm Gladwell sure covers a lot of ground in Talking With Strangers.

And before I kick off our initial, online discussion of the early part of the book, I have to say – if you haven’t had a chance to hear the audiobook version of this book – check it out! I “read” the book by combining reading the Kindle version and listening to the Audible audiobook version. And the audiobook version is very compelling as it  features  interviews with people mentioned in the book, like the intelligence officer the Mountain Climber and real life recordings of incidents described in the book, most notably the real life recording Sandra Blair made when she was pulled over for having a broken tail light.

I think it is fair to say the basic umbrella gist of the book, the one that covers all other aspects of it , is that people have a default truth belief setting, which Gladwell calls “Truth Default Theory.” So people in general, don’t know what the strangers they encounter, are thinking because humans are wired to believe people are telling the truth. Further, that people are frequently wrong when they think they know what other people, people that they don’t know (strangers) are thinking even if they are experts in a field.

And I’m running out of day here, it is almost 5:30, so I’ll have to cut this first discussion of the book a bit short.

I will say, that for me the most compelling story in the book, and the most horrifying, especially if you listen to the audiobook version, is the story of Sandra Bland as discussed in the introduction and final chapter of the book. No one should be pulled over by the police for a made up reason and then harassed and arrested because they protest of their unethical treatment; and then feel so despondent that they take their own life in jail days later.

I think Gladwell wanted to relay several major things in Talking With Strangers including

1. That people don’t know what strangers are thinking

2. That people default to truth belief mode

3. That some people think outside the truth-mode box and either see the truth more clearly than the majority of our society or completely misread the strangers.

And 4. That we need to do a better job at communicating with people and understanding strangers if we in the western world are to evolve our society into one that is truly more equal and ethical.

Those are in a nut shell, my initial thoughts about the book.

What did you think of the book?

Linda Reimer, SSCL