Hi everyone, pasted below are the notes for our May & June 2024 gatherings!

First thought, on an FYI note, here is the information on our July Book Club for Adults Gathering.

Location: Southeast Steuben County Library Conference Room

Date: Friday, July 12, 2024 | Time: 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

July Read: The Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

And here are the May & June notes!

Post Meeting Notes: May & June 2024  

Our May 2024 read was The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride  

Book club attendees liked our May Read, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.   

The observation was made that the promotional material for the book gives the impression that there is a big mystery to solve in the book; that mystery being, just whose body is discovered at the bottom of an old well in the Chicken Hill section of Pottstown, Pennsylvania? How did he meet his end? Was he murdered? The old skeleton is found at beginning of the novel, which actually starts at the end of the story in June 1972; and just after the skeleton is discovered, and before an investigation can be launched, Hurricane Agnes roars up the coast of the eastern United States and washes away the bones and any residual evidence.  

However, the novel really isn’t a murder mystery; instead, it is a portrait of a community on the fringe, beginning in the 1920s. The old community consisted of African Americans and Jews who weren’t welcome in the white Christian parts of town; and the novel relays the trials and tribulations of several impactful members of the local community including:  

Chona Flohr, the daughter of Rabbi Flohr, owner of the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, who marries Moshe Ludlow and later shields young Dodo from Dr. Roberts and the local Klu Klux Klan.   

Addie and Nate Timblin, a black couple who take in their young, orphaned nephew Dodo. Dodo is very smart but deaf and members of the local Klu Klux Klan think the boy should be institutionalized.  Addie and Nate are devoted to Dodo and work hard to keep him out of the hands of the local Klu Klux Klan arraigning for Dodo to stay with Chona and Moshe Ludlow.   

Dr. Earl Roberts, a member of the local Klu Klux Klan who works on investigating Dodo, as a preamble to having him institutionalized.  Dr. Roberts is an infamous person among the local community as he is known both for his K.K.K. affiliation, for seeing himself as being better than everyone else and treating other people, especially non-whites, accordingly.  

Late in the story, decades in the past, an inebriated Dr. Roberts, is mistaken for someone else, is beaten up and falls into the open well, where the work men attending to the well do not see his body. Thus, there is a murder of sorts, but it is one of mistaken identity and readers can be pleased that the despicable Dr. Roberts got his moral comeuppance.   

And in an attempt at brevity, not something this typist is good at! I should also note; that the number one pillar of the Chicken Hill community, in the days of old was Chona Ludlow who ran the Heaven & Eart Grocery Store, shielded young Dodo from the K.K.K. and grew to love him dearly; she also loved her community and treated other members of the community accordingly.  

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Our June 2024 read was Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward   

 Several members noted that they found the use of metaphysical spirits in the book a bit confusing and/or thought it detracted from the story; and the consensus of book club members was to give the title a “read it!” thumbs up.  

Let Us Descend, is set during the pre-Civil War slavery era, tells both the tale of Annis, the third generation in her matriarchal line to be enslaved in the United States; and gives readers a glimpse of what it was like to be a female slave in United States during that era; when enslaved women not only were directed in what they did during all their lives, but also didn’t even have autonomy over their own bodies, being treated at best as disrespected, disposable property.   

Annis’s grandmother Aza, known as Mama Aza, was born in Africa, was the warrior wife of an African King, was sold into slavery by her husband when her affair with another man was discovered, and taught her daughter Sasha the defensive and survival skills she had learned as a warrior wife.  Sasha in turn, trains Annis in those same skills during private nighttime practice sessions. Annis was repeatedly raped by her owner, and Annis’s biological father, who is referred to in the text only as Annis’s “Sire.”  

Young Annis is an intelligent girl and clandestinely listens to her white half-sister’s lessons with their tutor. She is especially taken with Dante’s Inferno and its description of people going to and climbing out of hell; and it is the descent to hell described in that story, from which the author selected the title of this story – Let Us Descend.   

When Annis becomes a young woman, her Sire begins to eye her, intending to rape her as he did her mother. He tries to trap her in his bedroom while she is cleaning; her mother Sasha steps in and calls Annis to come out of the room and join her in the hallway of the big house, where they both were working, to go home for the day.  

In retaliation, the Sire sells Sasha. Subsequently, Annis suffers a deep depression and is only, eventually, brought out of her depression by her friendship and love of a fellow female slave Safi. The young girls take comfort in their relationship, but are unfortunately spotted kissing by Annis’s Sire and as a result are sold to “The Georgia Man.” The girls are then marched south from the Carolina’s to New Orleans to be sold. They are forced to walk chain-gang style, roped together so that if one person stumbles or falls, all people in the line are impacted. The conditions are worse than deplorable. The slaves must march on foot for the whole journey in oppressive heat and are given little food. During the march Safi is untied, taken out of the line and raped by one of the white overseers who then does not retie her bonds tightly enough. Safi is then able to untie her bond, free herself and escapes; she asks Annis to come with her. However, Annis, who by this time has encounter a spirit calling herself Mama Aza, but who is not the spirit of her grandmother, isn’t sure whether she should try and escape or not, the latter course of action being the advice of Spirit Aza, so she stays with the group and completes the march to New Orleans.   

Once in New Orleans, Annis is sold to a plantation where the man of the house spends his time conducting business in a nearby town, leaving his cruel wife to oversee his estate. The wife holds an iron rod over all activity on the estate. The slaves are not properly fed, are always hungry and are forced to do a variety of hard labor; they are also put in a hole-in-the-ground for the smallest, or even an imagined, transgression.   

Once at the new plantation, Annis gets to know some of the other slaves including the inseparable friends Esther and Mary, and eventually she also encounters Esther’s brother Bastian. Bastian escaped from slavery, lives in the wilderness near the plantation and occasionally brings his sister food. Subsequently Annis and Bastian have a brief consensual sexual encounter.  

Annis is twice put in the hole-in-the-ground, and the second time she decides to break free, escape and uses the survival skills passed down to her from her African Grandmother Aza to live on her own deep in the wilderness.  

Annis hikes far into a huge swamp, finds an abandoned cabin whose previous occupants died of yellow fear, and there sets up her small homestead. She rests and works on gathering food for several days and then realizes she is pregnant. She decides to raise her child in the swamp and teach her daughter the same survival skills that were passed down to her from her mother and grandmother.   

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Looking ahead, our next Book Club for Adults gathering will be held at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., on Friday, July 12, 2024.   

We’ll be reading the book: Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood   

This book has received good reviews, and I’ve discovered it has a bit more drama to it than I initially thought. The book is set in contemporary England and tells the tale of the middle age Grace Adams, who is going through a difficult Perimenopause, is separated from her husband and trying to reconnect with her estranged teenage daughter. As the book opens, Grace is picking up an expensive cake for her daughter’s birthday and is determined to deliver it to her and talk to her as well. Naturally, Murphy’s Law applies, and directly after picking up the cake she gets stuck in a traffic jam; in Perimenopausal frustration Grace abandons her car determined to take the cake to her daughter even if she must walk miles to her daughter’s birthday party. And as the story unfolds readers discover Grace’s tale, which includes a look at her past, how she was amazing linguist who was determined to have a brilliant career, how she fell in love with her husband Ben and her career plans changed; and how the unexpected death of a family member pushed everyone in Grace’s family to the breaking point.  

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Book Club Member’s Recommended Reads May & June 2024:  

Titles are all books unless otherwise specified. 

American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden by Katie Rogers: In 1993, the differences between the outgoing president, patrician George H. W. Bush, and the newly elected, folksy Bill Clinton could not have been more telling. The contrast between their wives was equally stark. While Barbara Bush appeared as an irascible matron, Hillary Clinton presented the epitome of feminist ambition. With her assignment to shepherd sweeping new health care legislation, Clinton’s tenure as First Lady morphed from a traditional ceremonial post to something of significance. By its very nature, the office’s unstructured portfolio exposes its occupants to open interpretation by themselves and others. If Jill Biden is famously hands-on in protecting and advising husband Joe, Melania Trump was infamously hands-off, to the point of inscrutability. For other FLOTUSes, their mandate was a manifestation of their core identities. Former librarian Laura Bush championed literacy. For Michelle Obama, with her controversially toned arms, the cause was health and nutrition. As the New York Times’ White House correspondent, Rogers rigorously examines the notion of legacy and the first lady in the modern era. These women, she maintains, are “the most known (and often least understood) women in America.” Rogers’ unerring journalistic evaluation of the person behind the post should help change all that. – Starred Booklist Review  

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A Brilliant Life: My Mother’s Inspiring True Story of Surviving the Holocaust by Rachelle Unreich: A Holocaust story is never an easy read, but A Brilliant Life has such a harrowing prologue that it throws the reader right into the thick of it, so be prepared. Stories of ageing and dying parents can be tearful at times, too, but there’s hope and beauty in this ‘brilliant’ biography. Journalist Rachelle Unreich has vividly captured her mother Mira’s bright spirit, both through her accounts of Mira’s earlier life and through the modern-day first-person moments interspersed throughout the book. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1927, Mira was 17 when she was taken to the first of four concentration camps, surviving each one thanks to people who, in her words, ‘helped me without getting benefit from it themselves’. Unflinching information is included about Mira’s experiences in Plaszow, Birkenau, Auschwitz, and on the arduous death march to Ravensbrück in Germany, when even her inimitable spirit seems about to break. Well researched but never dry, the book shines when describing Mira’s family and her capacity to see light through horrific darkness and notice the moments of serendipity. After a long and captivating life, Mira is living with terminal cancer in her home in Melbourne in 2016, and her daughter interviews her while she still has time. We are brought into the family fold and invited to join them in Mira’s final days, enjoying the richness of the storytelling the way we might at a Shabbat meal. – Publishers Weekly Review  

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Celtic Ways to Pray: Finding God in the Natural Elements by Ruth Lindberg Pattison:  

Celtic traditions point to God in the natural elements in this refreshing take on how to pray. 

Where is God when we pray? Artist and priest Ruth Pattison looks to the legacy of Celtic spirituality to say God is in all of creation that surrounds us—earth, fire, water, air—and not up in the clouds. She invites the reader into a grounded spirituality rooted deep in Celtic tradition that sees everything as infused with the Spirit—including humanity. 

The material will deepen the experience of worship with creative hands-on spiritual practices for the context of liturgy. It can also be used for creating the structure and substance of retreats, spiritual formation classes, and for helping parents who want to learn to pray with children. 

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Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by Erin French: French, owner of the highly regarded Lost Kitchen Restaurant in a small Maine town called Freedom, candidly writes about becoming a successful chef and mother. The author takes us out of the kitchen to draw a picture of her growth and evolution into a personally and professionally successful woman in small-town New England. French’s life is not all smooth sailing; a childhood of searching for parental approval while helping out in the family diner takes a sharp turn when French finds herself pregnant as a young woman. The next several years are punctuated by both successes and failures, culminating in a challenging struggle with addiction and overcoming the effects of a toxic marriage. The writing is frank and, particularly when related to her struggle to regain custody of her son, heart-wrenching. The redemptive arc of the final chapters is satisfying and will leave readers wanting to know more about the author’s life and the band of restaurant workers she has brought together. VERDICT Openly sharing insight on overcoming difficult family dynamics and on struggling with addiction, French has written a standout chef memoir that will have readers turning the pages. -Starred Library Journal Review  

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Lessons in Cadence: Discover the Tools, Tactics And Mindset Necessary to Turn Towards the Path of Recovery Against the Struggle Within by Eric Basek, Curt Miller, et al.: Former Police Officer, Eric Basek spent five months interviewing nine exceptional individuals whose path of service demanded a heavy sacrifice. Each of the stories you will read herein are the tales of heroes; five military veterans, and four police officers, whose journey through life took them along a path of adversity, sorrow, tragedy and ultimately triumph over the traumas they all suffered through. In reading these stories, you will not only find the common threads that tie all of their journeys together, but hopefully also the ones that tie all of their journeys with your own. 

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Life: My Story Through History: Pope Francis’s Inspiring Biography Through History by Pope Francis and Aubrey Botsford: Pope Francis (A Good Life) provides a plainspoken overview of how some of the most significant events of the 20th and early 21st centuries shaped his life and morals. Among other episodes, he examines how the news from Nazi Germany he heard during his childhood in Argentina awoke him to “the persecution of Jews”; remembers watching the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, a recollection that leads him to call for Christians to build “bridges instead of barriers”; and suggests that the events of September 11 offer a lesson in the importance of decrying “the use of the name of God to justify slaughter.” Elsewhere, Francis covers the creation of the EU, the 2007–2008 Great Recession, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite a tendency to meander (as when his recollection of the 1969 moon landing awkwardly launches into a critique of technology’s ills), readers will be fascinated by the insights into how these historical events influenced a transformative pope who broke with his more conservative predecessors by recognizing and blessing same-sex civil unions and entertaining the possibility that atheists could go to heaven. Catholics will value this chance to see the leader of their church in a fresh light. – Publishers Weekly  

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Long Island by Colm Tóibín: The quietly devastating sequel to Brooklyn picks up two decades later with Eilis Lacey, now in her 40s, hemmed in by her overbearing in-laws on Long Island in 1976. First Eilis discovers that her husband, Tony, has been unfaithful, then she learns his family has decided without her consent to raise the child of his illicit affair. Furious, Eilis returns to Enniscorthy, the small town in Ireland she left in the 1950s, and arranges for her and Tony’s teenaged daughter and son to join her there to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Eilis hasn’t been back since the death of her sister, Rose, many years earlier. On that trip, though she was already married to Tony without her family’s knowledge, she fell in love with pub owner Jim Farrell. Jim has never married but is soon to become engaged to the widow Nancy Sheridan, Eilis’s dear old friend. Now, Eilis’s second homecoming upends life in the village as she and Nancy each stumble toward what they believe they deserve, and Jim considers what’s more important: his commitments or his desires. Tóibín is brilliant at tallying the weight of what goes unsaid between people (“They could do everything except say out loud what it was they were thinking”), and at using quotidian situations to illuminate longing as a universal and often-inescapable aspect of the human condition. Tóibín’s mastery is on full display here. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review  

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The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya: An electrifying biography of one of the most extraordinary scientists of the twentieth century and the world he made. 

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann. 

 Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. A child prodigy, he mastered calculus by the age of eight, and in high school made lasting contributions to mathematics. In Germany, where he helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics, and later at Princeton, von Neumann’s colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet—bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and the design of the atom bomb; he helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory; he created the first ever programmable digital computer; he prophesized the potential of nanotechnology; and, from his deathbed, he expounded on the limits of brains and computers—and how they might be overcome. 

Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through a stunningly diverse array of fields, sparking revolutions wherever he went. The Man from the Future is an insightful and thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century. 

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The Messy Lives of Book People by Phaedra Patrick: The house cleaner of a famous author must carry out her employer’s shocking last wish in this delightful new novel from beloved author Phaedra Patrick 

 Mother of two Liv Green barely scrapes by as a maid to make ends meet, often finding escape in a good book while daydreaming of becoming a writer herself. So she can’t believe her luck when she lands a job housekeeping for her personal hero, megabestselling author Essie Starling, a mysterious and intimidating recluse. The last thing Liv expected was to be the only person Essie talks to, which leads to a tenuous friendship. 

When Essie passes away suddenly, Liv is astonished to learn that her dying wish was for Liv to complete her final novel. But to do so Liv will have to step into Essie’s shoes. As Liv begins to write, she uncovers secrets from the past that reveal a surprising connection between the two women—one that will change Liv’s own story forever… 

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Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride: MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA chronicles the story of four black American soldiers who are members of the US Army as part of the all-black 92nd Buffalo Soldier Division stationed in Tuscany, Italy during World War II. They experience the tragedy and triumph of the war as they find themselves trapped behind enemy lines and separated from their unit after one of them risks his life to save an Italian boy. Directed by Spike Lee from a screenplay written by James McBride, the author of the acclaimed novel of the same name, the film explores a deeply inspiring, powerful story drawn from true history, that transcends national boundaries, race, and class to touch the goodness within us all. 

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Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney: In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and many around him, including certain other elected Republican officials, intentionally breached their oath to the Constitution: they ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violent attack on our Capitol.   Liz Cheney, one of the few Republican officials to take a stand against these efforts, witnessed the attack first-hand, and then helped lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In Oath and Honor, she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history, those who helped Trump spread the stolen election lie, those whose actions preserved our constitutional framework, and the risks we still face. 

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The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman 

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind. 

Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.” 

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum – the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice – and love – triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most. 

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The Secret Garden (Movie; there are several versions, the 2020 edition with Colin Furth was mentioned): Adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved story about Mary Lennox, a troubled, sickly, orphaned to live with an uncle after her parents have died in a cholera outbreak in India. 

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The Tobacco Wives by Adele Myers: North Carolina, 1946. One woman. A discovery that could rewrite history. 

Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives. 

But she soon learns that Bright Leaf isn’t quite the carefree paradise that it seems. A trail of misfortune follows many of the women, including substantial health problems, and although Maddie is quick to believe that this is a coincidence, she inadvertently uncovers evidence that suggests otherwise. 

Maddie wants to report what she knows, but in a town where everyone depends on Big Tobacco to survive, she doesn’t know who she can trust—and fears that exposing the truth may destroy the lives of the proud, strong women with whom she has forged strong bonds. 

Shedding light on the hidden history of women’s activism during the post-war period, at its heart, The Tobacco Wives is a deeply human, emotionally satisfying, and dramatic novel about the power of female connection and the importance of seeking truth. 

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Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes: (This description is for the book; the 2003 movie, based on the book is also good) 

Mayes’s favorite guide to Northern Italy allots seven pages to the town of Cortona, where she owns a house. But here she finds considerably more to say about it than that, all of it so enchanting that an armchair traveler will find it hard to resist jumping out of the chair and following in her footsteps. The recently divorced author is euphoric about the old house in the Tuscan hills that she and her new lover renovated and now live in during summer vacations and on holidays. A poet, food-and-travel writer, Italophile and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, Mayes is a fine wordsmith and an exemplary companion whose delight in a brick floor she has just waxed is as contagious as her pleasure in the landscape, architecture and life of the village. Not the least of the charms of her book are the recipes for delicious meals she has made. Above all, her observations about being at home in two very different cultures are sharp and wise. 

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With Arm’s Reach by Ann Napolitano  

In Napolitano’s wonderful first novel, deftly told from six points of view, a New Jersey family bears witness to the cycle of life. The matriarch of the Irish-American McLaughlin clan, Catharine, is living in a care facility, her “whole life one room.” On the other end of the spectrum, Catharine’s unmarried granddaughter, Gracie, is pregnant by a man she doesn’t love. The news is a surprise: Gracie wishes she’d conceived immaculately; her sister, Lila, can’t believe Gracie’s pregnant again; and Catharine has hangups about illegitimacy. Napolitano gracefully and honestly charts the tensions as the various family members come together. “We are family, but we have very little in common except that we are terrible at small talk,” muses Lila at an Easter gathering. “e size each other up and glance for the nearest exit and wonder, Why are you here? Why am I here? 

” Gracie’s unborn child promises both conflict and hope. As Catharine, haunted by loving ghosts of the past, recalls, “There was order to our family then, and small children running around filling the rooms with laughter…. hen the baby comes, when the laughter of children fill our rooms again, everything will settle down. This family will be whole.” Catharine’s hopes becomes the readers’ hopes as well, as they watch her family—her “life’s work”—grow and endure. – Publishers Weekly Review  

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The Woman King (2022) (Movie): Inspired by true events, this is the remarkable, action-packed story about the all-female unit of warriors who protected the African Kingdom of Dahomey with skills and a fierceness unlike anything the world has ever seen. Follow the epic and intense journey of General Nanisca (Oscar® winner VIOLA DAVIS; 2016, Best Supporting Actress, Fences) as she trains the next generation of recruits and readies them for battle against an enemy determined to destroy their way of life. 

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Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSC Library

Hi everyone, just a reminder, The May 2024 Book Club for Adults, at the Southeast Steuben County Library, will be meeting this Friday, May 10, 2024, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Room.

Our May read is The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.

Looking forward to June, a early heads up; that due to the annual library staff training conference being held the second Friday in June, we’ll deviate from our usual second Friday of the month schedule that month, meeting instead, on the first Friday of the month – Friday, June 7, 2024, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. as usual.

Our June read is Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, copies of which can be picked up at the library at any time through the last week of May.

Just an FYI if you haven’t already joined our book club – everyone is welcome! No need to register, just show up on Friday!

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, first the info. on our upcoming April 2024 Book Club for Adult Gathering! 

The Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults will hold our next meeting at the library on Friday, April 12, 2024, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. in the Conference Room at the library.  

Our April Read is: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant 

Looking forward a month, our May 2024 gathering will be held at the library on Friday, May 10, 2024. Our May Read is The Heaven & Earth Book Store by James McBride.  

Copies of both the April & May Reads may be picked up at the Circulation Desk at any time! 

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And here are the notes on our March 2024 Gathering & Read:  

The March 2024 Book Club for Adults gathering was held at the library on Friday, March 8, 2024. 

Our March Read was The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane 

The Half Moon is the story of a long-married couple Malcolm & Jess Gephardt, during a time of crisis.   

Martin, a bar manager, has an outgoing personality and loves to interact with people, making him the perfect bartender. He has been the head bartender of the local Half Moon bar for years, and he has recently achieved his long-held dream of owning the Half Moon bar, by naively making an oral deal with the bar’s previous owner Hugh.   

In contrast, Jess is a more reserved person, a lawyer who works at a local law firm and who has worked hard for years to climb the corporate ladder, but has lost rungs along the way due to her struggles with I.V.F. Jess’s two main life goals have been to make partner at her law firm and to have a baby.   

During the book readers discover that Malcolm and Jess, originally married in their twenties because they were unexpectedly expecting a baby, that they subsequently lost that baby, and have more recently tried multiple times to conceive via I.V.F. without success. The couple recently came to a crossroads on the baby making front, with Jess wanting to continue to try and conceive and Malcolm having concluded that they are never going to conceive and deciding he prefers to stop trying, thus eliminating the related struggle and stress from his life. 

In a sense, you could say both Malcolm and Jess are having a mid-life crisis. Malcolm was so determined to buy The Half Moon that he didn’t thoroughly vet the sale with Hugh and so he got a bad deal; and despite Malcolm’s best efforts to turn a profit the Half Moon is losing money, and Martin knows the business isn’t sustainable.  And Jess has become aware that having to take time off from work, for I.V.F. treatments has cost her the opportunity to become a partner at her law firm, and now it seems her other big dream, to have a baby will not be coming to fruition either, so to put it succinctly, she feels as if all the dedication and hard work she has put in towards her goals has been wasted and gained her nothing. 

During the book, a distraught Jess leaves Malcolm and temporarily takes up with another man, a man without a wife but with three young children, and Malcolm struggles to live without Jess, taking care of the bar while trying to figure out what to do about his failing business.  

Toward the end of the book, the couple, in what might be bending believability a bit, reconcile. Jess users her sharp lawyer skills to get Malcolm out his bad deal with Hugh and as part of the new deal, Malcolm sells the land the Half Moon building is set on, which he discovers his mother actually owns and gives to him; in doing so Malcolm discharges all his debts and is able to start over with a clean slate.  

Malcolm then accepts an offer from a friend to manage a bar on St. John’s Island, in the Caribbean, with Jess seeing him off and expecting to join him on the island shortly.  

The consensus of book club members is to give the book two thumbs down as a “don’t read it!” title.  

Some book club members didn’t find the story believable; others thought the characters weren’t well drawn and several book club members just generally didn’t like the book and didn’t finish it. There were one or two book club members who thought the book was okay; but suffice to say the book club will not be reading another title by Mary Beth Keane! 

In contrast, I have spoken to several book club members about our April Read, The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant, and they have all said they either have and/or are enjoying reading the book. So, I have high hopes that the majority of book club members will enjoy reading our next read! 

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Book Club Members Recommended Reads: March 2024 

Elderhood by Louise Aronson  

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction 

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 

Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award 

The New York Times bestseller from physician and award-winning writer Louise Aronson–an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life, as revelatory as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal. 

For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. 

Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy–a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. 

Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author’s own words, “an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being.” 

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Erasure by Percival Everett 

Percival Everett’s blistering satire about race and publishing, now adapted for the screen as AMERICAN FICTION, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross 

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been “critically acclaimed.” He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited “some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days.” Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies―his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer’s, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father’s suicide seven years before. 

In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins’s bestseller. He doesn’t intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is―under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh―and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel. 

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Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh 

Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these mindfulness practices and integrating them into your life from moment to moment and from day to day, you can learn to manage chronic pain, promote optimal healing, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of your life, relationships, and social networks. This second edition features results from recent studies on the science of mindfulness, a new Introduction, up-to-date statistics, and an extensive updated reading list. Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well and the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in our fast-paced world. 

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If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother by Julia Sweeney 

“I took so long to assemble my lovely family. If only they would disappear.”  

While Julia Sweeney is known as a talented comedienne and writer and performer of her one-woman shows, she is also a talented essayist. Happily for us, the past few years have provided her with some rich material. Julia adopted a Chinese girl named Mulan (“After the movie?”) and then, a few years later, married and moved from Los Angeles to Chicago. She writes about deciding to adopt her child, strollers, nannies (including the Chinese Pat), knitting, being adopted by a dog, The Food Network, and meeting Mr. Right through an email from a complete stranger who wrote, “Desperately Seeking Sweeney-in-Law.” She recounts how she explained the facts of life to nine-year-old Mulan, a story that became a wildly popular TED talk and YouTube video.  

Some of the essays reveal Julia’s ability to find that essential thread of human connection, whether it’s with her mother-in-law, who candidly reveals a story that most people would keep a secret, or with an anonymous customer service rep during a late-night phone call. But no matter what the topic, Julia always writes with elegant precision, pinning her jokes with razor-sharp observations while articulating feelings that we all share.  

Poignant, provocative, and wise, this is a funny, and at times powerful, memoir by a woman living her life with originality and intelligence. 

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Meditation by Marcus Arelius  

 Written in Greek by an intellectual Roman emperor without any intention of publication, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a wide range of fascinating spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the leader struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. Spanning from doubt and despair to conviction and exaltation, they cover such diverse topics as the question of virtue, human rationality, the nature of the gods and the values of leadership. But while the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation, in developing his beliefs Marcus also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a series of wise and practical aphorisms that have been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and ordinary readers for almost two thousand years. 

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Recipe for a Perfect Wife: A Novel by Karma Brown  

In this intriguing dual narrative novel, a modern-day woman finds inspiration in hidden notes left by her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife. As she discovers remarkable parallels between this woman’s life and her own, it causes her to question the foundation of her own relationship with her husband—and what it means to be a wife fighting for her place in a patriarchal society. 

When Alice Hale leaves a career in publicity to become a writer and follows her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. But when she finds a vintage cookbook buried in a box in the old home’s basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook’s previous owner—1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she realizes that within the cookbook’s pages Nellie left clues about her life—including a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to her mother. 

Soon Alice learns that while baked Alaska and meatloaf five ways may seem harmless, Nellie’s secrets may have been anything but. When Alice uncovers a more sinister—even dangerous—side to Nellie’s marriage, and has become increasingly dissatisfied with the mounting pressures in her own relationship, she begins to take control of her life and protect herself with a few secrets of her own. 

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West Heart Kill: A novel by Dann McDorman 

LOOKING FOR AN ANYTHING-BUT-ORDINARY WHODUNIT? • Welcome to the West Heart Club. Where the drinks are neat but behind closed doors . . . things can get messy. Where upright citizens are deemed downright boring. Where the only missing piece of the puzzle is you, dear reader. 
 
A unique and irresistible murder mystery set at a remote hunting lodge where everyone is a suspect, including the erratic detective on the scene—a remarkable debut that gleefully upends the rules of the genre. 
 
“A thoroughly original suspense novel that hops across elements of the genre—a diabolical locked-room mystery interspersed with a fascinating primer on the form—while always being tremendous fun to read.”—Chris Pavone, best-selling author of Two Nights in Lisbon 
 
An isolated hunt club. A raging storm. Three corpses, discovered within four days. A cast of monied, scheming, unfaithful characters. 
 
When private detective Adam McAnnis joins an old college friend for the Bicentennial weekend at the exclusive West Heart club in upstate New York, he finds himself among a set of not-entirely-friendly strangers. Then the body of one of the members is found at the lake’s edge; hours later, a major storm hits. By the time power is restored on Sunday, two more people will be dead . . . 

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Tel: 607-936-3713 x212

Email: reimerl@stls.org

Hi everyone, just a reminder! The March 2024 Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults gathering will be held this Friday, March 8, 2024.

We’ll be meeting in the Conference Room at the library, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., and will be discussing the novel, The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane.

Also of note, due to the popularity of our originally scheduled read for April (which translates into the book having a long holds list); we’re going to switch our April and May Reads, to give us time to get copies of the book The Heaven And Earth Grocery Store, our original April Read (now our May Read). Copies of our switched May with April Read, The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant are available in system, have been requested and are already starting to arrive although we may not have enough copies on hand for everyone until next week – so let me know you’d like a copy sent to you.

And as that last paragraph may be confusing, here is a more straight-forward way of accessing the updated schedule information; here is the book club schedule with reading list for March – August 2024!

Book Club for Adults Schedule & Reading List: March – August 2024

Friday, March 8, 2024 The Half Moon: A Novel by Mary Beth Keane (296 pages)

Friday, April 12, 2024 The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant (322 pages)

Friday, May 10, 2024 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride  (385 pages)

Friday, June 14, 2024 Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (305 pages)

Friday, July 12, 2024 The Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood (256 pages)

Friday, August 9, 2024 Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (368 pages)

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And we’ll discuss book club selections for fall 2024, tomorrow, at our March gathering.

Also, if you are unable to attend our March gathering and have a suggestion for a book you’d like to have our group read and discuss – feel free to let me know in person, via phone, tel: 607-936-3713 x 212, or via email: reimerl@stls.org

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, first up, the info on our February meeting. The SSCL Book Club for Adults will be meeting on Friday, February 9, 2024, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. 

We’ll be discussing the novel Crook Manifesto, the second book in a historical fiction trilogy by Colson Whitehead. The book is set in New York City in the 1970s and follows Ray Carney, the owner of a successful furniture store who once sold stolen goods, but  now focuses on his legitimate business and his family. 

The consensus is that you do not need to read the first novel, Harlem Shuffle, to follow Carney’s story in the second book, although it does feature more of the character’s back story so if you have time to read the first book too – you’ll find out more about Ray, his family and the New York City world of the 1970s. 

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And here are the notes from our January 2024 gathering! 

The Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults met on Friday, January 12, 2024, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the library. 

We discussed our January Read, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. 

In brief, the novel is an ecological thriller, featuring an activist environmental group, named Birnam Wood, whose members cultivate plants on public and private property, without permission of the property owners, to draw attention to environmental issues.  

The plot features three main sets of characters,  the Birnam Wood group, which includes head honcho Mira Bunting, her best friend, back up and eventually, briefly, her successor in leading Birnam Wood, Shelley Noakes and Tony Gallo, a founding member of Birnam Wood, and former lover of Mira, who leaves the group when he can’t convince them to follow his plan of action, and who then transitions into an investigative reporter. 

The second, set of characters, consists of one character, the psychopathic American millionaire Robert Lemonie, who although quite rich, is determined to become richer still, and whose current get-richer-project is to quietly mine rare metals from Darvish’s land and the adjacent National Park, under the guise of building a doomsday bunker. Lemonie is used to getting what he wants and going all out to manipulate people and situations to do so.  

And the third set of characters consists of the couple that own the land Lemoine is buying and Birnam Wood is cultivating, Sir Owen and Lady Darvish. Sir Owen has just been knighted for his conservation work; which is ironic because he owns a pest control company and got his start shooting rabbits. 

The novel takes place mainly on the land owned by Sir Owen, which is located near a fictional national park in New Zealand. Robert Lemoine is purchasing the property and, despite not owning it, gives permission to Mira Bunting to have Birnam Wood plant cultivate the land.  

In this novel, each of the main characters is self-centered, has an agenda and is ambitious which is a combination that can always be toxic or explosive; and in the case of the novel, does indeed, turn deadly; although granted the powder keg explosion is kicked off by an accident when, the spaced-out-and-tripping Shelley accidentally gets into Mira’s van and runs over and kills Sir Owen.  

Lemoine, who is nearby with Mira, puts the still tripping Shelley back in the van and tells her nothing she has seen is real, and concocts a plan to make Sir Owen’s death appear to be an accident. Lemoine wants to continue his illegal mining and knows that an in-depth police investigation would be unavoidable if it were known Sir Own was the victim of manslaughter. As the cover-up plan unfolds, and Lemoine has more interaction with Shelley, her realizes she, unlike Mira, has no limits and could conceivable be as ruthless as he is; thus, he determines to both bankroll Birnam Wood, and that Shelley is the one who should lead Birnam Wood. Mira, who knows she’s in too deep, as the colloquial expression goes, agrees with Lemoine’s plan. Meanwhile Tony has been out in the woods investigating the supposed building of the doomsday bunker, and has discovered Lemoine’s illegal mining operation, although he is convinced the government is behind it. Tony has been chased by some of Lemoine’s armed guards and is tired and injured when he encounters Mira who agrees to help him. Lemoine discovers Tony and escorts Tony and Mira back to the house.  

The novel ends with a bang, as readers follow Lady Darvish, who has buried her beloved husband, is convinced Lemoine is responsible for Sir Owens death and is determined to confront Lemoine. She drives to the property, goes into the empty house and hears a shot, so she picks up a gun and some ammunition and carefully walks towards where the shot was fired from. 

As this is unfolding, Lemoine, who had previously directed Shelley to call a morning meeting of Birnam Wood at the Darvish house; and graciously said he’d provide breakfast, had indeed done that, providing a poisoned breakfast, intending that all the troublesome Birnam Wood group, who have turned out to be more trouble than he wants to deal with, are delt with.  

And as Lemoine is standing in the midst of the group of dying activists, with Tony tied to a dead Mira, and casually using his phone, Lady Darvish comes on the scene and doesn’t hesitate to pass sentence on him, she shoots Lemoine right between the eyes killing him outright. She then frees Tony, the only one still alive, and is then shot in the back by one of Lemoine’s hired guards.  

The novel ends as Tony, having run through the woods to the site of Lemoine’s mining operation, sets it on fire so that people will know illegal, environmentally damaging activity had gone on there. And the novel abruptly ends with Tony wondering who will put out the fire.  

In as much of a nutshell, as I can manage, and granted I’m not good at writing short pieces, that is an overview of the plot of Birnam Wood. The novel has an additional literary layer, the title itself is taken from Shakespear’s Macbeth. The author has woven a tapestry of similar dramatic-tragic design with threads spotlighting that ambition is evil and corrupts, as does having unlimited funds which translates into villains, in this case Lemoine, having almost unlimited power and thus being almost unstoppable, until someone, in the case of Birnam Wood, Lady Darvish, takes drastic and unexpected, at least to the villain, action and eliminates the problem, in this case Lady Darvish eliminated the problem by eliminating Lemoine himself.  

The consensus of book club attendees is that Birnam Wood was a good thriller read. Although several persons commented on the ending being both tragic and slightly ambiguous; tragic in the sense that readers can assume that all the main characters died at the end of the story, and slightly ambiguous because although Tony alone escaped, and readers can assume that he too died in the fire he set, we do have to assume that as the writer closed the story abruptly with Tony thinking about the fire, and waiting to die, but still very much alive.  

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Book Club Members Recommended Reading/Viewing/Listening: January 2024 

Reading: 

Absolution by Alice McDermott  

Returning to fiction after What About the Baby?, McDermott focuses on characterization. Young newlywed Patricia and little Rainey meet in Saigon in 1963 at a garden party hosted by Rainey’s mother, Charlene. It is Patricia’s introduction to the world of American high-society wives. With the assistance of some U.S. military personnel, Charlene draws Patricia into her black-market activities involving a Vietnamese children’s hospital and a leprosarium. Charlene’s imperious treatment of the Vietnamese women in her employ further strains the women’s relationship. Sixty years later, Rainey tracks down Patricia to ask her for the full story of Charlene’s secretive influence over whomever she met. Charlene was the catalyst both for Patricia’s metamorphosis from a naive dewy-eyed “helpmeet” to tougher pragmatic independent woman and for Rainey’s transition from a troubled adolescent to a happily married wife and mother. VERDICT National Book Award winner McDermott frames this exquisite novel (a recent Barnes & Noble book club pick) against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Social class, awakening feminist consciousness, the bladed side of “good works,” and the power of one seemingly small event that changes lives forever are perfectly revealed in this correspondence between two women, connected over six decades by their shared experience. – Library Journal Review  

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Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P Carney 

A fresh diagnosis of what ails so many places in the United States today.In opening his run for president, Donald Trump famously declared that “the American Dream is dead.” Many of his core supporters agreed and looked to him to restore it; many other voters rejected this premise, and Trump, entirely. Locating the precincts where Trump did exceptionally well and exceptionally poorly in the early 2016 primaries, Washington Examiner commentary editor Carney (Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses, 2009, etc.) set out to discover what they had in common and thus what they might tell us about the actual health of the American dream. Synthesizing a number of sociological studies of these places, the author brushes aside the easy tropes about loss of manufacturing jobs and fear of immigrants, concluding that confidence in the dream depends on the health of a community’s institutions of civil society, in particular religious groups and marriage. While elite communities have thriving social networks to support individuals and families, poorer ones depend on fraternal groups, labor unions, sports leagues, and similar volunteer organizations, many of which have withered in recent decades, particularly in areas of economic dislocation. This in turn leaves residents isolated, alienated, and distrustful. According to Carney, churches provide a low-barrier gateway to restored civic connection in a wide variety of ways, and he has the numbers to prove it. Though occasionally repetitive and dry, the author presents a sophisticated analysis that defies easy summary, using an informal style and illustrative stories about individuals and towns to draw readers along. Unfortunately, he concludes that civic alienation cannot be reversed by central government, which is often guilty of crowding out the very local institutions that are needed; it can only be cured from the grassroots up. An approachable and incisive yet discouraging analysis with wide applicability to contemporary political and social challenges. – Kirkus Review 

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Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story by Lee Berger 

This first-person narrative about an archaeological discovery is rewriting the story of human evolution. A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger’s own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century. 

In 2013, Berger, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, caught wind of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators—men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through 8-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave 40 feet underground. With this team of “underground astronauts,” Berger made the discovery of a lifetime: hundreds of prehistoric bones, including entire skeletons of at least 15 individuals, all perhaps two million years old. Their features combined those of known prehominids like Lucy, the famous Australopithecus, with those more human than anything ever before seen in prehistoric remains. Berger’s team had discovered an all new species, and they called it Homo naledi. 

The cave quickly proved to be the richest prehominid site ever discovered, full of implications that shake the very foundation of how we define what makes us human. Did this species come before, during, or after the emergence of Homo sapiens on our evolutionary tree? How did the cave come to contain nothing but the remains of these individuals? Did they bury their dead? If so, they must have had a level of self-knowledge, including an awareness of death. And yet those are the very characteristics used to define what makes us human. Did an equally advanced species inhabit Earth with us, or before us? Berger does not hesitate to address all these questions. 

Berger is a charming and controversial figure, and some colleagues question his interpretation of this and other finds. But in these pages, this charismatic and visionary paleontologist counters their arguments and tells his personal story: a rich and readable narrative about science, exploration, and what it means to be human. 

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A Cursed Place: A page-turning thriller of the dark world of cyber surveillance by Peter Hanington 

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. AND THEY KNOW EVERYTHING. 

The tech company Public Square believes in ‘doing well by doing good’. It’s built a multi-billion dollar business on this philosophy and by getting to know what people want. They know a lot. But who else can access all that information and what are they planning to do with it? 

Radio reporter William Carver is an analogue man in a digital world. He isn’t the most tech-savvy reporter, he’s definitely old school, but he needs to learn fast – the people he cares most about are in harm’s way. 

From the Chilean mines where they dig for raw materials that enable the tech revolution, to the streets of Hong Kong where anti-government protesters are fighting against the Chinese State, to the shiny research laboratories of Silicon Valley where personal data is being mined everyday – A Cursed Place is a gripping thriller set against the global forces that shape our times. 

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The Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It by Nina Siegal 

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp. 

Journalist Nina Siegal, who grew up in a family that had survived the Holocaust in Europe, had always wondered about the experience of regular people during World War II. She had heard stories of the war as a child and Anne Frank’s diary, but the tales were either crafted as moral lessons — to never waste food, to be grateful for all you receive, to hide your silver — or told with a punch line. The details of the past went untold in an effort to make it easier assimilate into American life. 

When Siegal moved to Amsterdam as an adult, those questions came up again, as did another horrifying one: Why did seventy five percent of the Dutch Jewish community perish in the war, while in other Western European countries the proportions were significantly lower? How did this square with the narratives of Dutch resistance she had heard so much about and in what way did it relate to the famed tolerance people in the Netherlands were always talking about? Perhaps more importantly, how could she raise a Jewish child in this country without knowing these answers? 

Searching and singular, The Diary Keepers mines the diaries of ordinary citizens to understand the nature of resistance, the workings of memory, and the ways we reflect on, commemorate, and re-envision the past. 

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The Future by Naomi Alderman  

When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now, she’s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father’s fox and rabbit sermon—once a parable to her—are starting to come true, how much future is actually left? 

Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She’s cornered, desperate and—worst of all—might die without ever knowing what’s going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future? 

Martha and Zhen’s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha’s relentless drive and Zhen’s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization. 

By turns thrilling, hilarious, tender, and always piercingly brilliant, The Future unfolds at a breakneck speed, highlighting how power corrupts the few who have it and what it means to stand up to them. The future is coming. The Future is here. 

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The Girl Behind the Gates: The gripping, heart-breaking historical bestseller based on a true story by Brenda Davies 

‘Compelling. Poignant. Haunting. Heart wrenching. Just beautiful. Everyone needs to read this wonderful book.’ – Renita D’Silva, bestselling author of The Forgotten Daughter 

1939. Seventeen-year-old Nora Jennings has spent her life secure in the certainty of a bright, happy future – until one night of passion has more catastrophic consequences than she ever could have anticipated. Labelled a moral defective and sectioned under the Mental Deficiency Act, she is forced to endure years of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of those who are supposed to care for her. 

1981. When psychiatrist Janet Humphreys comes across Nora, heavily institutionalized and still living in the hospital more than forty years after her incarceration, she knows that she must be the one to help Nora rediscover what it is to live. But as she works to help Nora overcome her past, Janet realizes she must finally face her own. 

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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker 

Delving into the mysterious roots of a misunderstood condition, Kolker (Lost Girls) tells the story of the Galvin family, who lived on Hidden Valley Road, and their role in a scientific discovery. Kolker describes how, after discovering that six of the 12 Galvin children were diagnosed with schizophrenia, medical researchers began collecting their genetic material in hopes of determining the biology of the disease. The Galvin clan comes alive in Kolker’s eloquent telling: distant parents Don and Mimi, who wanted to be seen as a model military family; the six affected sons, many of whom spent time in and out of mental hospitals; and two daughters, who were all but abandoned by their parents. Alternating chapters movingly detail the family’s tragedy and despair, including the ways the illness manifests, along with the study of illness as a science in order to determine its genetic makeup. Throughout, Kolker effectively shows how illness impacts each relative, especially those who live alongside it. VERDICT Kolker masterfully combines scientific intrigue with biographical sketches, allowing readers to feel as if they are right there with the Galvins as researchers examine their genes in the quest for answers. – Starred Library Journal Review 

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How to Be a Christian: Reflections and Essays by C. S. Lewis 

From the revered teacher and bestselling author of such classic Christian works as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters comes a collection that gathers the best of C. S. Lewis’s practical advice on how to embody a Christian life. 

The most famous adherent and defender of Christianity in the twentieth century, C. S. Lewis has long influenced our perceptions and understanding of the faith. More than fifty years after his death, Lewis’s arguments remain extraordinarily persuasive because they originate from his deep insights into the Christian life itself. Only an intellectual of such profound faith could form such cogent and compelling reasons for its truth. 

How to Be a Christian brings together the best of Lewis’s insights on Christian practice and its expression in our daily lives. Cultivated from his many essays, articles, and letters, as well as his classic works, this illuminating and thought-provoking collection provides practical wisdom and direction Christians can use to nurture their faith and become more devout disciples of Christ. 

By provoking readers to more carefully ponder their faith, How to Be a Christian can help readers forge a deeper understanding of their personal beliefs and what is means to be a Christian, and strengthen their profound relationship with God 

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The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page 

Janice is an exceptional cleaner. Her clients all say so. She is also a collector of stories. All across Cambridge, Janice collects tales of those for whom she works and others who surround her. Geordie is an opera singer, Fiona and her son Adam have been rocked by a recent loss, Mrs. YeahYeahYeah (as Janice calls her) is singularly preoccupied with fundraising, the gal who sells Janice a new pair of boots once played squash for England. Janice is only too happy to collect others’ stories, but she doesn’t feel she has one of her own to tell. That is, until Mrs. YeahYeahYeah recruits her to clean her mother-in-law’s home. Mrs. B is in her nineties and, as a former intelligence officer, is incredibly tricky. Can she trick Janice’s story out of her? Can Janice find a way to tell her own story and create a new one for the second half of her life? Moving and funny, this debut novel is a perfect read for romantics and sentimentalists of all stripes. – Booklist Review 

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The Love Story of Missy Carmichael by Beth Morrey 

For readers of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and A Man Called Ove, a life-affirming, deeply moving “coming-of-old” story, a celebration of how ordinary days are made extraordinary through friendship, family, and the power of forgiving yourself–at any age. 

“At a time when people are having to isolate, [this novel is] a balm, offering an expansive sense of love and possibility at a time when the main characters feel like those chances are gone.” –Christian Science Monitor 

The world has changed around seventy-nine-year-old librarian Millicent Carmichael, aka Missy. Though quick to admit that she often found her roles as a housewife and mother less than satisfying, Missy once led a bustling life driven by two children, an accomplished and celebrated husband, and a Classics degree from Cambridge. Now her husband is gone, her daughter is estranged after a shattering argument, and her son has moved to his wife’s native Australia, taking Missy’s beloved only grandchild half-a-world away. She spends her days sipping sherry, avoiding people, and rattling around in her oversized, under-decorated house waiting for…what exactly? 

The last thing Missy expects is for two perfect strangers and one spirited dog named Bob to break through her prickly exterior and show Missy just how much love she still has to give. In short order, Missy finds herself in the jarring embrace of an eclectic community that simply won’t take no for an answer–including a rambunctious mutt-on-loan whose unconditional love gives Missy a reason to re-enter the world one muddy paw print at a time. 

Filled with wry laughter and deep insights, The Love Story of Missy Carmichael is a coming-of-old story that shows us it’s never too late to forgive yourself and, just as important, it’s never too late to love. 

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The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery  by Barbara K. Lipska with Elaine McArdle 

In the tradition of My Stroke of Insight and Brain on Fire, this powerful memoir recounts Barbara Lipska’s deadly brain cancer and explains its unforgettable lessons about the brain and mind. 

Neuroscientist Lipska was diagnosed early in 2015 with metastatic melanoma in her brain’s frontal lobe. As the cancer progressed and was treated, she experienced behavioral and cognitive symptoms connected to a range of mental disorders, including dementia and her professional specialty, schizophrenia. 

Lipska’s family and associates were alarmed by the changes in her behavior, which she failed to acknowledge herself. Gradually, after a course of immunotherapy, Lipska returned to normal functioning, amazingly recalled her experience, and through her knowledge of neuroscience identified the ways in which her brain changed during treatment. 

Lipska admits her condition was unusual; after recovery she was able to return to her research and resume her athletic training and compete in a triathalon. Most patients with similar brain cancers rarely survive to describe their ordeal. Lipska’s memoir, coauthored with journalist Elaine McArdle, shows that strength and courage but also an encouraging support network are vital to recovery. 

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Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman 

What if Romeo and Juliet had different shades of skin? Sephy (short for Persephone), nearly 14 at the start of the novel, is dark-skinned, a member of the ruling “Crosses,” and the wealthy daughter of a powerful politician. Her best friend is 15-year-old Callum, a pale-skinned “naught” whose mother had been Sephy’s nursemaid. The two continue to meet on the sly after Callum’s mother is fired. When a new law allows “the crème de la crème of naught youth” to attend Cross high schools, Sephy believes she and Callum can be friends in public. Callum hopes a good education will help him rise out of poverty. Instead, the introduction of naughts into Cross classrooms leads to taunting, fist fights and expulsions. British author Blackman’s plot, told in Sephy and Callum’s alternating voices, is an amalgam of 20th-century race relations. The setting resembles England, but the author mixes in issues similar to American history (such as a school integration scenario reminiscent of Little Rock in 1957). The naughts’ protest organization (the Liberation Militia), however, more closely resembles the Irish Republican Army than members of the nonviolent U.S. Civil Rights movement. Indeed, an IRA-like bombing at a shopping center (linked to Callum’s family) propels the second half of the story. Unfortunately, the first half unspools leisurely, but those who stick with this novel will get a tragic tale of star-crossed lovers and plenty to ponder. – Publishers Weekly Review  

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The Power by Naomi Alderman  

All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers.It might be a little jolt, as thrilling as it is frightening. It might be powerful enough to leave lightning-bolt traceries on the skin of people the girls touch. It might be deadly. And, soon, the girls learn that they can awaken this new–or dormant?–ability in older women, too. Needless to say, there are those who are alarmed by this development. There are efforts to segregate and protect boys, laws to ensure that women who possess this ability are banned from positions of authority. Girls are accused of witchcraft. Women are murdered. But, ultimately, there’s no stopping these women and girls once they have the power to kill with a touch. Framed as a historical novel written in the far future–long after rule by women has been established as normal and, indeed, natural–this is an inventive, thought-provoking work of science fiction that has already been shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in Britain. Alderman (The Liars’ Gospel, 2013, etc.) chronicles the early days of matriarchy’s rise through the experiences of four characters. Tunde is a young man studying to be a journalist who happens to capture one of the first recordings of a girl using the power; the video goes viral, and he devotes himself to capturing history in the making. After Margot’s daughter teaches her to use the power, Margot has to hide it if she wants to protect her political career. Allie takes refuge in a convent after running away from her latest foster home, and it’s here that she begins to understand how newly powerful young women might use–and transform–religious traditions. Roxy is the illegitimate daughter of a gangster; like Allie, she revels in strength after a lifetime of knowing the cost of weakness. Both the main story and the frame narrative ask interesting questions about gender, but this isn’t a dry philosophical exercise. It’s fast-paced, thrilling, and even funny. Very smart and very entertaining. – Starred Kirkus Review  

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The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger 

In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and “a work of art” (The Denver Post). 

On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past. 

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose. 

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of mid-century American life that is “a novel to cherish” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The River We Remember offers an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home. 

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The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides  

Alicia Berenson is a famous painter, living a life that many envy with her handsome fashion-photographer husband, Gabriel. With a gorgeous house, complete with a painting studio, and that perfect marriage, Alicia couldn’t be happier. Until one day Gabriel comes home late from work, and Alicia shoots him in the face. In the brutal aftermath that leads to an indefinite stay in a psychiatric hospital, Alicia mutely accepts her punishment. Forensic psychotherapist Theo Faber is put in charge of her therapy; however, since the night of the shooting, she hasn’t spoken a word. With a nod to Greek mythology, art, and love, debut novelist Michaelides effectively blurs the lines between psychosis and sanity. Multiple story lines are told with a writing style that combines past diary entries with present-day prose, becoming more tangled as they weave together, keeping readers on edge, guessing and second-guessing. The Silent Patient is unputdownable, emotionally chilling, and intense, with a twist that will make even the most seasoned suspense reader break out in a cold sweat. – Booklist Review  

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The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan 

From the Middle East and its political instability to China and its economic rise, the vast region stretching eastward from the Balkans across the steppe and South Asia has been thrust into the global spotlight in recent years. Frankopan teaches us that to understand what is at stake for the cities and nations built on these intricate trade routes, we must first understand their astounding pasts. 

Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East. 

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Small Town Sins by Ken Jaworoski 

New York Times editor Jaworowski shines in his artful debut, which interweaves the stories of several struggling residents in the Rust Belt town of Locksburg, Pa. When Nathan was 17, he impregnated the first girl he slept with and had to come up with the $1,000 she needed to get an abortion. He resorted to pawning his disabled mother’s wedding ring, but when its disappearance was noted, the search for it ended tragically. Decades later, Nathan is a volunteer firefighter whose marriage is troubled by his wife’s fertility issues. His fortunes change when he stumbles on millions in cash while saving a man from a burning building and chooses to keep the loot. Violent complications ensue, and Jaworowski weaves them with the stories of other desperate town residents, including the former-addict father of a disabled child and a nurse with a congenital facial disfigurement who hopes to give a girl with terminal cancer her dying wish, even if doing so would break the law. Jaworowski skillfully toggles between his plot threads, never sacrificing character development for cheap thrills. Admirers of Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan will be eager for more from this talented storyteller. – Starred Publishers Weekly Review  

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Somewhere Towards The End: A Memoir by Diana Athill  

Noted British editor and writer Athill decided at 91 to have a go at writing about the process of getting old. In this refreshingly candid memoir, she traces some of the landmarks she has passed since her seventies, faculties lost and gained, actions taken causing pleasure or regret. Her somewhat tardy discovery of adult-education classes led to a love of sewing, painting, and gardening, though dwindling energy finally curtailed that latter activity, much to her chagrin. Following a lengthy discussion of her lack of faith in an afterlife, which entails proceeding toward death without the support of religion, Athill recalls the deaths of her parents and grandparents, many of whom lived into their nineties with their mental faculties intact, leading her to conclude she has inherited a good chance of going fairly easily. One regret is not having the courage to escape the narrowness of her pleasant, easily navigable life. She concludes with what she terms random thoughts, choice pearls sparkling with dry wit for the reader to ponder, reflect upon, and perhaps assimilate. – Booklist Review  

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Wandering Through Life by Donna Leon 

The internationally bestselling author of the Guido Brunetti mysteries tells her own adventurous life story as she enters her eighties 

In a series of vignettes full of affection, irony, and good humor, Donna Leon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned. 

Following a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather’s farm and its beloved animals, and summers spent selling homegrown tomatoes by the roadside, Leon got her first taste of the classical music and opera that would enrich her life. She also developed a yen for adventure. In 1976, she made the spontaneous decision to teach English in Iran, before finding herself swept up in the early days of the 1979 Revolution. After teaching stints in China and Saudi Arabia, she finally landed in Venice. Leon vividly animates her decades-long love affair with Italy, from her first magical dinner when serving as a chaperone to a friend, to the hunt for the perfect cappuccino, to the warfare tactics of grandmothers doing their grocery shopping at the Rialto Market. 

Some things remain constant throughout the decades: her adoration of opera, especially Handel’s vocal music, and her advocacy for the environment, embodied in her passion for bees—which informs the surprising crux of the Brunetti mystery Earthly Remains. Even as mass tourism takes its toll on the patience of residents, Leon’s passion for Venice remains unchanged: its outrageous beauty and magic still captivate her. 

Having recently celebrated her eightieth birthday, Leon poignantly confronts the dual challenges and pleasures of aging. Complete with a brief letter dissuading those hoping to meet Guido Brunetti at the Questura, and always suffused with music, food, and her sharp sense of humor, Wandering through Life offers Donna Leon at her most personal. 

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Viewing: 

The Boys In The Boat (2023) 

A 1930s-set story centered on the University of Washington’s rowing team, from their Depression-era beginnings to winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. – IMDB 

The Boys In The Boat Trailer: 

 

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The Color Purple (2023) 

A woman faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood. – IMDB (Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel)  

 

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Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017) (Netflix) 

Literary icon Joan Didion reflects on her remarkable career and personal struggles in this intimate documentary directed by her nephew, Griffin Dunne. 

Trailer available via the following link, but you have to sign in to your free YouTube (Gmail) account as, according to YouTube, all material isn’t suitable for all ages: 

The Center Will Not Hold Trailer: 

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Noughts + Crosses (2020-present) (BBC) 

A British drama television series based on the Noughts & Crosses novel series by Malorie Blackman. The series is set in an alternative history where black “Cross” people rule over white “Noughts”. 

The BBC synopsis “Against a background of prejudice, distrust and powerful rebellion mounting on the streets, a passionate romance builds between Sephy and Callum which will lead them both into terrible danger.” 

Noughts + Crosses Trailer: 

  

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A Tale of O: Video on Diversity (from YouTube – the video cuts out during the last 30 seconds – but it is still an interesting 9 minute watch) 

 

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Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019) (Netflix) 

Late author Toni Morrison talks about life and writing in this documentary exploring the ways her work reflects themes of race and American history. 

The Pieces I Am Trailer: 

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Other Things Discussed: 

Activist Dorothy Day, who cofounded the social justice group, the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin in the nineteen thirties.  

For more information:  

https://www.biography.com/activists/dorothy-day

https://dorothydaycwfarm.org/

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Have a great day & I hope to see everyone at the library next Friday!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, a belated post regarding our December 2023 read.

In December 2023 we read and discussed the only short story ever published by Toni Morrison; the thought provoking Recitatif. 

The story packs quite a bit into less than 100 pages, chronicling the relationship of two women, Twyla and Roberta, who first meet as children in the late fifties, when both are left at an orphanage by their respective mothers. The girls spend months living as roommates and building a keeping-us-safe-from-the-rest-of-the-world type of friendship, only to part and meet again four times during their adult lives; once as young women at a Howard Johnson’s, then as wives at school busing protests, later at a grocery store and finally, the two more mature women, meet, by chance at a party, and subsequently have their most  in-depth and reflective conversation. 

And the big, purposely unanswered question the author raises, and weaves through the text, is about race; as readers know from the beginning one girl is black and one is white, but Morrison never reveals which is which, giving readers much to ponder about the interaction between the two women, the historical events unfolding at the time of each meeting and how race has, and continues to impact the way we live in America.  

December book club attendees gave Recitatif a sold thumbs up read rating!

And here is the current book club schedule:

Friday, February 9, 2024 Crook Manifesto: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (336 pages)

Friday, March 8, 2024 The Half Moon : A Novel by Mary Beth Keane (296 pages)

Friday, April 12, 2024 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride (385 pages)

Friday, May 10, 2024 The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant (322 pages)

Friday, June 14, 2024 Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (305 pages)

Friday, July 12, 2024 The Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood (256 pages)

And here is a listing of the items the library has ordered in January 2024:

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

P.S. Notes from the January 2024 book club gathering will be posted later this week; and our February Read: Crook Manifesto is the second book in a series by Colson Whitehead. You do not have to read the first book in the series to enjoy the second book. However, should you wish to read the first book first, it is titled Harlem Shuffle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is an overview of the Recitatif plot:  

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

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Our November 2023 Read was Maame by Jessica George  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Book Club Members Recommended Reads & Watches:   

Recommended Reads:  

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

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

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

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The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong: 

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

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

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

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

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Young Jane: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin:   

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

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Suggested Watching:  

Recommended Watches:   

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

Link to access trailer:  

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Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, our October 2023 Book Club for Adults gathering was held at the library, on Friday, October 13, 2023, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.  

Our October 2023 Read was the novel The Library of Lost Words by Pip Williams.  

The novel, set during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a skip forward to the nineteen eighties in the last chapter, tells the story of Esme Nicoll, the daughter of Harry Nicoll, one of the editors working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, hereafter referred to as the O.E.D. 

Compiling the O.E.D. took years to complete. Work on the dictionary began in 1884 and the first edition was completed in 1928.  

So the backdrop of the story is the compiling of the dictionary, while in the forefront of the story, readers follow Esme, who as a child sat  under the editor’s table at the O.E.D. office, known as the Scriptorium, and picked up discarded slips containing words rejected by the editors, then placing them in a trunk so they wouldn’t be lost.  

As she grew from a child to a youth, Esme, realized the creators of the O.E.D. were all relatively affluent, educated men who saw the world from that vantagepoint, and thus had a tendency to discard words that reflected more diverse points of view; and she worked on creating her own dictionary of words, safeguarding words that offered a more diverse view of the world, especially those used by women and people of the lower classes, words that would otherwise have been lost – the “lost words” of the title of the book;  words that she knew wouldn’t meet with the approval of the editors working on the O.E.D. and thus, wouldn’t be included in the dictionary and saved for posterity.  

As a young adult, Esme was sent away to school, and later was hired by James Murray, the head editor of the O.E.D. project, to work as a clerical assistant, but not as an editor despite her background and in keeping with the patriarchal society of the day.  

Esme had a love affair, became pregnant and, in keeping with the societal norms of the day, and with support from her father Harry and godmother Edith kept the birth secret and gave her child to a couple her godmother knew, who adopted the baby girl they named Meghan, the newly created family then moving to Australia.  

After her child was adopted, Esme returned to Oxford and continued her work at the Scriptorium. World War I broke out, she fell in love with Gareth Owen, a feminist who privately published her Dictionary of Lost Words, who subsequently became a soldier and was killed in action during the war. After her husband’s death, and with a new supervisor taking over the O.E.D. project, Esme left her job at the O.E.D. to work in a hospital and continued her quiet work of saving the words of unrecognized people, particularly women. She was killed in a street accident at the age of 46. And in the last part of the book readers discover that after her untimely death her godmother sent her collection of lost words to her daughter, Meghan in Australia. Meghan, who had recently lost her adoptive mother, was upset in both finding her birth mother had died and in receiving Esme’s collection of lost words, and an in-depth note of explanation from Esme’s erudite godmother. However, at the very end of the book, in the late nineteen eighties, Meghan is found giving a speech on the occasion of the publication of the second edition of the O.E.D. and readers understand, in reading between the lines, that Meghan, like her mother Esme and grandfather Harry before her, dedicated her career to saving words so they, and the cultural aspects they reflected, wouldn’t be lost. 

Esme’s story is the main one in the book; however, the book also relays the story of the power of language, the lack of power of minority groups of the day, namely women and members of the lower classes, how difficult it was for women to rise above the boxes society of the era placed them in; and how the roles of women were changing during that era with the rise of the Suffragette movement, which cumulated in women gaining the right to vote shortly after the end of World War I.   

The majority of the book club attendees liked the book; one person thought it was too long and the pace too slow; and the book club host didn’t like the ending of the book. 

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The next Book Club for Adults gathering will be held at the library, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m., on Friday, November 10, 2023; and starting in November, after the main book club discussion and our attendees recommend reads of the month; we’ll be adding a “tell us your favorite book stories” section; which will offer anyone who wishes, to share stories regarding their love of reading.  

Our November 2023 Read is Maame by Jessica George 

And here is a bit about the plot: 

Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman. 

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting. 

So when her mum returns from her latest trip, Maddie seizes the chance to move out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts”: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But when tragedy strikes, Maddie is forced to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils―and rewards―of putting her heart on the line. 

Smart, funny, and affecting, Jessica George’s Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong. 

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Book Club Members Recommended Reads for the Month: 

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. 

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. 

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. 

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Book Binder by Pip Williams  

A young British woman working in a book bindery gets a chance to pursue knowledge and love when World War I upends her life in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick The Dictionary of Lost Words. 

“Williams spins an immersive and compelling tale, sweeping us back to the Oxford she painted so expertly in The Dictionary of Lost Words.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife 

It is 1914, and as the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, women must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who live on a narrow boat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press. 

Ambitious, intelligent Peggy has been told for most of her life that her job is to bind the books, not read them—but as she folds and gathers pages, her mind wanders to the opposite side of Walton Street, where the female students of Oxford’s Somerville College have a whole library at their fingertips. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has: to spend her days folding the pages of books in the company of the other bindery girls. She is extraordinary but vulnerable, and Peggy feels compelled to watch over her. 

Then refugees arrive from the war-torn cities of Belgium, sending ripples through the Oxford community and the sisters’ lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can educate herself and use her intellect, not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, her love for a Belgian soldier—and the responsibility that comes with it—threaten to hold her back. 

The Bookbinder is a story about knowledge—who creates it, who can access it, and what truths get lost in the process. Much as she did in the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams thoughtfully explores another rarely seen slice of history through women’s eyes. 

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Counting The Cost by Jill Duggar, Derick Dillard & Craig Borlase  

For the first time, discover the unedited truth about the Duggars, the traditional Christian family that captivated the nation on TLC’s hit show 19 Kids and Counting. Jill Duggar and her husband Derick are finally ready to share their story, revealing the secrets, manipulation, and intimidation behind the show that remained hidden from their fans. 

Jill and Derick knew a normal life wasn’t possible for them. As a star on the popular TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting, Jill grew up in front of viewers who were fascinated by her family’s way of life. She was the responsible, second daughter of Jim Bob and Michelle’s nineteen kids; always with a baby on her hip and happy to wear the modest ankle-length dresses with throat-high necklines. She didn’t protest the strict model of patriarchy that her family followed, which declares that men are superior, that women are expected to be wives and mothers and are discouraged from attaining a higher education, and that parental authority over their children continues well into adulthood, even once they are married. 

But as Jill got older, married Derick, and they embarked on their own lives, the red flags became too obvious to ignore. 

For as long as they could, Jill and Derick tried to be obedient family members—they weren’t willing to rock the boat. But now they’re raising a family of their own, and they’re done with the secrets. Thanks to time, tears, therapy, and blessings from God, they have the strength to share their journey. Theirs is a remarkable story of the power of the truth and is a moving example of how to find healing through honesty. 

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Diary Keepers: World War II in the Netherlands, as Written by the People Who Lived Through It by Nina Siegal 

A riveting look at the story of World War II and the Holocaust through the diaries of Dutch citizens, firsthand accounts of ordinary people living through extraordinary times 

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp. 

Journalist Nina Siegal, who grew up in a family that had survived the Holocaust in Europe, had always wondered about the experience of regular people during World War II. She had heard stories of the war as a child and Anne Frank’s diary, but the tales were either crafted as moral lessons — to never waste food, to be grateful for all you receive, to hide your silver — or told with a punch line. The details of the past went untold in an effort to make it easier assimilate into American life. 

When Siegal moved to Amsterdam as an adult, those questions came up again, as did another horrifying one: Why did seventy five percent of the Dutch Jewish community perish in the war, while in other Western European countries the proportions were significantly lower? How did this square with the narratives of Dutch resistance she had heard so much about and in what way did it relate to the famed tolerance people in the Netherlands were always talking about? Perhaps more importantly, how could she raise a Jewish child in this country without knowing these answers? 

Searching and singular, The Diary Keepers mines the diaries of ordinary citizens to understand the nature of resistance, the workings of memory, and the ways we reflect on, commemorate, and re-envision the past. 

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Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson   

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. 

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. 

His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. 

At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. 

It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground. 

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress? 

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And the link to a related podcast, On With Kara Swisher, which features journalist Swisher’s interview with author Walter Isaacson – they have a lively discussion focusing on Isaacson’s biography of Musk.

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People Of The Book by Geraladine Brooks  

The “complex and moving”(The New Yorker) novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Geraldine Brooks follows a rare manuscript through centuries of exile and war 

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called “a tour de force “by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century S pain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics. 

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The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger  

In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and “a work of art” (The Denver Post). 

On Memorial Day in Jewel, Minnesota, the body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. The investigation falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past. 

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose. 

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of mid-century American life that is “a novel to cherish” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The River We Remember offers an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home. 

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Saving Emma: A Novel by Allen Eskens  

“Ambitious, absorbing, and deeply satisfying.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 

“Eskens brilliantly combines legal and personal drama.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

“Superb . . . another Eskens novel to be savored.” ―South Florida Sun-Sentinel 

When Boady Sanden first receives the case of Elijah Matthews, he’s certain there’s not much he can do. Elijah, who believes himself to be a prophet, has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past four years, convicted of brutally murdering the pastor of a megachurch. But as a law professor working for the Innocence Project, Boady agrees to look into Elijah’s file. When he does, he is alarmed to find threads that lead back to the death of his colleague and friend, Ben Pruitt, a man shot to death four years earlier in Boady’s own home. 

Ben’s daughter, Emma, has lived with Boady and Boady’s wife Dee ever since that awful night. Now fourteen years old, Emma has been growing distant, and soon makes a fateful choice that takes her far from the safety of her godparents. Desperate to bring her home, and to free an innocent man, Boady must do all he can to investigate Elijah’s case while fighting to save the family he has deeply come to love. 

Written with energy, propulsion, and his characteristic pathos and insight, Eskens delivers another pitch-perfect legal thriller that reveals a twisted murder and explores faith, love, family, and redemption along the way. 

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Small Town Sins by Ken Jaworowski 

Ken Jaworowski’s Small Town Sins is a gripping Rust Belt thriller that captures the characters of a down-and-out Pennsylvania town, revealing their troubled pasts and the crimes that could cost them their lives. 

In Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a former coal and steel town whose best days seem long past, five thousand residents have toughed it out, and have reasons for both worry and hope as this neglected place teeters between decay and renewal. For some of them, their biggest troubles have just arrived. 

After years of just scraping by, three restless souls have their lives upended: Nathan, a volunteer fireman who uncovers a secret stash of money in a burning building and takes it; Callie, a nurse whose tender patient may not have long to live, despite the girl’s fundamentalist parents’ ardent beliefs; and Andy, a recovering heroin addict who undertakes a nightmare mission to hunt down and stop a serial predator. 

Before long, Nathan’s stolen riches threaten to destroy everyone around him as he tries to cover his haphazard trail of lies. Callie risks her career to grant her young patient a final, and likely illegal, wish. And Andy’s hunger for vigilante justice becomes a fierce obsession that may end in violence. 

As their stories barrel toward unexpected ends, Nathan, Callie, and Andy struggle to endure—or escape. They each face their pasts and gamble on their futures, and confront the underside of their rough Rust Belt town. Riveting, evocative, and unforgettable, Small Town Sins is a debut novel that marks the arrival of a major new talent. 

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Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder  

Tracy Kidder’s “riveting” (Washington Post) story of one company’s efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and has become essential reading for understanding the history of the American tech industry. 

Computers have changed since 1981, when The Soul of a New Machine first examined the culture of the computer revolution. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations. 

The Soul of a New Machine is an essential chapter in the history of the machine that revolutionized the world in the twentieth century. 

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To Infinity And Beyond: A Journey Of Cosmic Discovery by Neil Degrassi Tyson  

This enlightening illustrated narrative by the world’s most celebrated astrophysicist explains the universe from the solar system to the farthest reaches of space with authority and humor. 

No one can make the mysteries of the universe more comprehensible and fun than Neil deGrasse Tyson. Drawing on mythology, history, and literature—alongside his trademark wit and charm—Tyson and StarTalk senior producer Lindsey Nyx Walker bring planetary science down to Earth and principles of astrophysics within reach. In this entertaining book, illustrated with vivid photographs and art, readers travel through space and time, starting with the Big Bang and voyaging to the far reaches of the universe and beyond. Along the way, science greets pop culture as Tyson explains the triumphs—and bloopers—in Hollywood’s blockbusters: all part of an entertaining ride through the cosmos. 

The book begins as we leave Earth, encountering new truths about our planet’s atmosphere, the nature of sunlight, and the many missions that have demystified our galactic neighbors. But the farther out we travel, the weirder things get. What’s a void and what’s a vacuum? How can light be a wave and a particle at the same time? When we finally arrive in the blackness of outer space, Tyson takes on the spookiest phenomena of the cosmos: parallel worlds, black holes, time travel, and more. 

For science junkies and fans of the conundrums that astrophysicists often ponder, To Infinity and Beyond is an enlightening adventure into the farthest reaches of the cosmos. 

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What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama 

For fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a charming, internationally bestselling Japanese novel about how the perfect book recommendation can change a readers’ life. 

What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. 

A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. 

In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams. What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is about the magic of libraries and the discovery of connection. This inspirational tale shows how, by listening to our hearts, seizing opportunity and reaching out, we too can fulfill our lifelong dreams. Which book will you recommend? 

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How To Talk by Howard D. Moore 

LR Note: I think this is the title and author mentioned during our October Book Club gathering, however, I may be wrong! As in searching for more information on the book, I didn’t find a book with that exact title by that exact author.  

So, if you recommended the book – let me know if that is the correct title and author – thanks! 

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Have a great day! 

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Hi everyone, our email system administrators have done a major upgrade of our email system, in Library Land. And I’ve lost access to my email list of the Book Club for Adults members.

Thus this email reminder that the October Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults gathering will be held next Friday, October 13, 2023 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Our October Read is The Dictionary of Lost Words, and we have freebie copies of the title, available at the Circulation Desk, if anyone needs a copy.

If you have questions about the book club, let me know!

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Email: reimerl@stls.org

Tel: 607-936-3713 x 212

Hi everyone, here is the Book Club for Adults Overview for September 2023! Our September Read was Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Malibu Rising unfolds in the Malibu region of California over a few days at the end of August 2023, with interspersed back stories telling the tale of the main characters: Famous rock star Mick Rivara, Mick’s first wife June Costas Rivara, and their children Nina a model and surfer, Jay a championship surfer, Hud a surfer and photographer and Kit, a college student and the best surfer of the bunch.

The main action unfolds in 1983 with the Riva siblings, who form a close family unit, getting together and catching up in the days prior to Nina’s annual end of summer party; which is the party to attend and to be seen to attend by the famous and influential people in the media industry of the day.  

The author then fills in the back story of the parents, Mick & June, their backgrounds, how they met and were married and how June supported Mick and held down the home front taking care of their two eldest children Nina & Jay, while ladies man Mick became a big rock star and focused on his career, spending most of his time away from home.

Mick it transpired, was incapable of fidelity, and despite many assurances that he would reform, eventually, after June married and divorced him and married him again, and they added more children to the family, Mick walked out to pursue his carefree lifestyle; and June; who was awarded money in their second divorce but never received it, and choose not to go after Mick to get it, wound up working at her parent’s fish fry restaurant and providing a paycheck-to-paycheck existence for her kids.

In the years after the second divorce, June becomes an alcoholic. And after eldest child Nina turned 17, she drowned in the family’s bathtub never really having a chance to reach for her highest potential in life as she wished to do. In the aftermath of June’s death, not quite 18-year-old Nina took charge, taking care of her siblings, dropping out of high school to work in the family restaurant and struggling to take care of the Rivara household; before being spotted by a modeling agent while surfing and beginning a lucrative modeling career. The novel goes on to relay what each of the Rivara children have been doing as adults and the fact that all four of them are at a crossroad in their lives.

Things come to a crux during the days just before the end-of-summer-party, during the party itself and in its aftermath, during which Mick makes an appearance. All four children choose new paths to take in their lives and Mick, self-centered and carless individual that he is, and always has been, inadvertently makes sure the 1983 end-of-summer bash is the last one – when he carelessly throws away a cigarette end starts a wildfire that burns Nina’s house down.  

Malibu Rising was a popular summer read the year it was published 2021. The book club members thought the book was a lightweight summer read and could have been better written.

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The next SSC Library Book Club for Adults Meeting will be held at the library the second Friday in October – that is Friday, October 13, 2023 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Our October Read is The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

Copies should be available at the library soon – I have a list of people who I will call when they come in – if you’d like to be added to the list, please let me know!

And here is an overview of the plot of:

The Dictionary of Lost Words

DEBUT Esme Nicoll’s love of words began underneath her father’s desk inside the Scriptorium, a garden shed where a team of lexicographers and assistants fashioned the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. One day, a slip falls from a Scriptorium desk and lands in Esme’s lap. Believing it to be discarded, Esme pockets the slip and stores it in a wooden chest. As she grows, Esme continues to collect words and slowly begins to understand that the words used by women and poor people are often deemed unworthy to be immortalized in print. As she diligently devotes her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme decides to give voice to the unwritten words by writing her own lexicon in secret–the Dictionary of Lost Words. Set in England in the harrowing era of women’s suffrage and the Great War, this fiction debut, by social researcher and memoirist Williams (One Italian Summer), uncovers perspectives that might have been lost if not for Esme’s love and dedication. VERDICT Enchanting, sorrowful, and wonderfully written, the book is a one-of-a-kind celebration of language and its importance in our lives. A must-have for every library collection. – Starred Library Journal Review

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Book Club Members Recommended Reads: September 2023

Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess

On Jess’s first day at Goldman Sachs, she’s less than thrilled to learn she’ll be on the same team as Josh, her white, conservative sparring partner from college. Josh loves playing the devil’s advocate and is just…the worst.

But when Jess finds herself the sole Black woman on the floor, overlooked and underestimated, it’s Josh who shows up for her in surprising—if imperfect—ways. Before long, an unlikely friendship—one tinged with undeniable chemistry—forms between the two. A friendship that gradually, and then suddenly, turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both.

Despite their differences, the force of their attraction propels the relationship forward, and Jess begins to question whether it’s more important to be happy than right. But then it’s 2016, and the cultural and political landscape shifts underneath them. And Jess, who is just beginning to discover who she is and who she has the right to be, is forced to ask herself what she’s willing to compromise for love and whether, in fact, everything’s fine.

A stunning debut that introduces Cecilia Rabess as a blazing new talent, Everything’s Fine is a poignant and sharp novel that doesn’t just ask will they, but…should they?

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Heaven And Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
    

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

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The Murder of King Tut: The Plot to Kill the Child King – A Nonfiction Thriller by James Patterson

The mystery of King Tut’s death in Ancient Egypt has haunted the world for centuries. Discover the ultimate true crime story of passion and betrayal, where the clues point to murder.

Thrust onto Egypt’s most powerful throne at the age of nine, King Tut’s reign was fiercely debated from the outset. Behind the palace’s veil of prosperity, bitter rivalries and jealousy flourished among the Boy King’s most trusted advisors, and after only nine years, King Tut suddenly perished, his name purged from Egyptian history. To this day, his death remains shrouded in controversy.

Now, in The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard dig through stacks of evidence-X-rays, Carter’s files, forensic clues, and stories told through the ages-to arrive at their own account of King Tut’s life and death. The result is an exhilarating true crime tale of intrigue, passion, and betrayal that casts fresh light on the oldest mystery of all.

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Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health by Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham

As a University of Chicago–trained economist and Harvard medical school professor and doctor, Anupam Jena is uniquely equipped to answer these questions. And as a critical care doctor at Massachusetts General who researches health care policy, Christopher Worsham confronts their impact on the hospital’s sickest patients. In this singular work of science and medicine, Jena and Worsham show us how medicine really works, and its effect on all of us.

Relying on ingeniously devised natural experiments—random events that unknowingly turn us into experimental subjects—Jena and Worsham do more than offer readers colorful stories. They help us see the way our health is shaped by forces invisible to the untrained eye. Is there ever a good time to have a heart attack? Do you choose the veteran doctor or the rookie?  Do you really need the surgery your doctor recommends? These questions are rife with significance; their impact can be life changing. Addressing them in a style that’s both animated and enlightening, Random Acts of Medicine empowers you to see past the white coat and find out what really makes medicine work—and how it could work better.

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Revival Season: A Novel by Monica West

Every summer, fifteen-year-old Miriam Horton and her family pack themselves tight in their old minivan and travel through small southern towns for revival season: the time when Miriam’s father—one of the South’s most famous preachers—holds massive healing services for people desperate to be cured of ailments and disease. But, this summer, the revival season doesn’t go as planned, and after one service in which Reverend Horton’s healing powers are tested like never before, Miriam witnesses a shocking act of violence that shakes her belief in her father—and her faith.

When the Hortons return home, Miriam’s confusion only grows as she discovers she might have the power to heal—even though her father and the church have always made it clear that such power is denied to women. Over the course of the following year, Miriam must decide between her faith, her family, and her newfound power that might be able to save others, but if discovered by her father, could destroy Miriam.

Celebrating both feminism and faith, Revival Season is a “tender and wise” (Ann Patchett) story of spiritual awakening and disillusionment in a Southern, Black, Evangelical community.

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Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today

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The Zookeepers’ War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War by J.W. Mohnhaupt and Shelley Frisch

Living in West Berlin in the 1960s often felt like living in a zoo, everyone packed together behind a wall, with the world always watching. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, East Berlin and its zoo were spacious and lush, socialist utopias where everything was perfectly planned… and then rarely completed.

Berlin’s two zoos in East and West quickly became symbols of the divided city’s two halves. So no one was terribly surprised when the head zookeepers on either side started an animal arms race—rather than stockpiling nuclear warheads, they competed to have the most pandas and hippos. Soon, state funds were being diverted toward giving these new animals lavish welcomes worthy of visiting dignitaries. West German presidential candidates were talking about zoo policy on the campaign trail. And eventually politicians on both side of the Wall became convinced that if their zoo proved to be inferior, that would mean their country’s whole ideology was too.

A quirky piece of Cold War history unlike anything you’ve heard before, The Zookeepers’ War is an epic tale of desperate rivalries, human follies, and an animal-mad city in which zookeeping became a way of continuing politics by other means.

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