Tag: Book Club

Book Club Gathering This Friday, July 10!

Book Club Gathering This Friday, July 10!

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, just a reminder that the July Book Club for Adults gathering will be held at the library this Friday, July 10, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. 

You may attend in person or via Zoom & here is the Zoom link:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84991054902?pwd=HsOXig3xmqZb1TywdGvvdw3Z7ctJoF.1

We’ll be discussing the novel The Antidote by Karen Russell; copies of which are available at the Circulation Desk if anyone needs a copy.  

Here is the Starred Booklist review of the title: 

The Antidote by Karen Russell: The prairie witch calls herself The Antidote because people feel so much better after she unburdens them of painful memories, storing them in her “vault.” But when she finds herself in jail in the midst of a terrifying dust storm in Uz, Nebraska, she realizes that the deposits she’s been paid to protect have vanished. High-school basketball star Asphodel Oletsky, living, since her mother was murdered, with her uncle Harp, a dryland farmer, is desperate to keep her winning team on the court after they lose their sponsor. Harp is haunted by how his Polish parents were forced off their land by the Germans, only to find themselves unwittingly doing the same to Native Americans. New Deal photographer Cleo Allfrey, at risk on the plains as a Black woman, arrives in Uz during the worst of the Dust Bowl and finds people pushed to the brink by drought, deadly and otherworldly dust storms, vanished crops and topsoil, unsolved murders, and a corrupt and brutal sheriff. Among many strange occurrences, Cleo’s photographs inexplicably depict the horrific past and a possible future. Highly honored Russell follows two stellar story collections with her second novel, an ardent work of encompassing and compassionate historical fiction supercharged with her signature imaginative, astutely calibrated supernatural twists. A dramatic and uncanny tale of the drastic consequences of our destruction of nature and Indigenous communities. 

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Also of note, the book received great reviews from Kirkus & Publishers Weekly, and was one of NPR’s best books of 2025 https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#year=2025&book=242 

Time Magazine also recommended the book: https://time.com/7291593/best-books-of-2025-so-far/ 

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Looking forward to August, we’ll be meeting on Friday, August 14 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. and we’ll be discussing the novel The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

Here is the Publishers Weekly Review of the novel: 

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans: The charming debut from Evans takes the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, foes, and literary idols. It begins in 2012 as Sybil Van Antwerp, 73, politely declines an invitation to visit her brother, Felix, in France, then fancifully invites the author Ann Patchett to use her Maryland home as a writer’s retreat. Sybil spent her career clerking for a judge, and after reading of his death in the newspaper, she begins receiving strange and threatening letters from an aggrieved former defendant, who calls her a “cold metal bitch.” Evans juxtaposes these screeds with Sybil’s intimate fan mail to Joan Didion, who writes her back in 2013, expressing empathy as a fellow member of “the club of parents who have buried children” (Sybil lost a son at eight). Sybil, who was adopted, grows curious about her ancestry after her older son gives her a DNA test for Christmas, and she brushes off concerns about her declining eyesight from her daughter, Fiona, who lives in Australia. As the years go on, Sybil’s relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama.  

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And just as FYI, the Summer Reading seasons has started & you can sign up for the Summer Reading program at the Reference Desk. You can win prizes for reading and improve library stats too! 

There are also special events for all ages during the Summer Reading Program season and here is the Summer Reading Programming brochure with all the events, dates & times:

Adult Summer Reading Programs 2026Download

And here is the updated Book Club Schedule for the balance of 2026:

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What’s the difference between: “Magical Realism” and “Urban Fantasy?” This topic came up during our June gathering, and I thought I’d check so I’d have a more concrete answer to the question!

So here is more information on the subject:

Magical Realism

In magical realism, the extraordinary is woven seamlessly into everyday life. The magical elements are rarely explained because the story is not about the magic—it is about the human experience.

Examples

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez
  • Love in the Time of Cholera — Gabriel García Márquez (contains magical realist elements)
  • The House of the Spirits — Isabel Allende
  • Like Water for Chocolate — Laura Esquivel
  • Beloved — Toni Morrison
  • The Famished Road — Ben Okri
  • Exit West — Mohsin Hamid
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake — Aimee Bender

Urban Fantasy

Urban fantasy takes place in a recognizable modern world where magic, supernatural beings, or mythical creatures exist alongside ordinary life—often hidden from most people.

Examples

  • Storm Front — Jim Butcher
  • Moon Called — Patricia Briggs
  • Magic Bites — Ilona Andrews
  • Rivers of London — Ben Aaronovitch
  • Neverwhere — Neil Gaiman
  • American Gods — Neil Gaiman
  • Dead Until Dark — Charlaine Harris
  • Rosemary and Rue — Seanan McGuire

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Books Read by Book Club Members in June (and reported at the June gathering): 

God Impulse: The Power of Mercy In An Unmerciful World by Jack Alexander: For Jesus, truth and mercy went hand in hand. Where he preached he also healed. He didn’t outsource one or the other to biblical scholars or nonprofit ministries. He presented the truth of the gospel through his words and his actions, and he did it all in a hands-on, relational way. And the reaction was the same wherever he went–people were amazed. 

Today we seem to have lost this powerful pattern of self-giving love, focusing on truth at the expense of mercy or on mercy at the expense of truth, and often failing to build genuine, lasting relationships with the people around us. 

In The God Impulse, Jack Alexander helps us recover Jesus’s model, showing through biblical and modern real-life stories that God’s first impulse toward us is mercy. He then sets forth a pattern for us to follow–to see, go, do, and endure–that not only spreads truth and love to those around us who are suffering but also causes them to gasp in amazement and consider the claims of the gospel for themselves. 

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God: A Biography: Pulitzer Prize Winner by Jack Miles: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE 

What sort of “person” is God? What is his “life story”? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world’s greatest book—as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and ambiguities of a Hamlet? This is the task that Jack Miles—a former Jesuit trained in religious studies and Near Eastern languages—accomplishes with such brilliance and originality in God: A Biography. 

Using the Hebrew Bible as his text, Miles shows us a God who evolves through his relationship with man, the image who in time becomes his rival. Here is the Creator who nearly destroys his chief creation; the bloodthirsty warrior and the protector of the downtrodden; the lawless law-giver; the scourge and the penitent. Profoundly learned, stylishly written, the resulting work illuminates God and man alike and returns us to the Bible with a sense of discovery and wonder. 

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Isola by Allegra Goodman: Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island. 

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed. 

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival. 

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On Witness and Respair: Essays by Jesmyn Ward: From the two-time National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Jesmyn Ward, this collection of essays documents more than a decade of work in the life of a singular writer often lauded as “the heir apparent to Toni Morrison” (LitHub).  

Beginning with her upbringing in a multigenerational household in rural Mississippi, the cradle of both her youth and her gift for storytelling, Ward brings her keen wisdom and hauntingly lyrical prose to a range of topics, following in her grandmother Dorothy’s footsteps when she promises always to “Tell it straight. Tell it all.” 

True to her word, in these pages Ward contemplates the writers and novels of her youth and adulthood—the transformative power of discovering Octavia Butler as a twenty-something, the mirror that Richard Wright’s novels held up to her own childhood, and of course, her lifelong love for Toni Morrison. Ward ruminates on her approach to both fiction and life, reflecting on the power of the novel, how to raise a Black son in an era of rising divisiveness and cruelty, as well as her own personal tragedies—including the titular essay of the collection, which tells the story of her partner’s sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic. Every bit as piercing and moving as her fiction, On Witness and Respair is a testament to Ward’s powers as “one of America’s finest living writers” (San Francisco Chronicle) and is a monument to hope, beauty, and personal and collective resilience. 

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The Retirement Plan: A Novel by Sue Hincenbergs:  

THEY’D KILL TO BE WIDOWS. 

Three best friends turn to murder to collect on their husbands’ life insurance policies… But the husbands have a plan of their own in this darkly funny debut suspense novel that will delight readers from the first laugh to the final twist. 

After thirty years of friendship, Pam dreams of her perfect retirement with Nancy, Shalisa, Marlene, and their husbands—until their husbands pool their funds for an investment that goes terribly wrong. Suddenly, in this witty domestic thriller, their golden years are looking as dreary as their marriages. 

But when the women discover their husbands have seven-figure life insurance policies, a new dream forms. And this time, they need a hitman. 

Meanwhile, their husbands are working on their own secret retirement scheme and when things begin to go sideways, they fear it’s backfired. The husbands scramble to stay alive…but soon realize they may not be quick enough to outmaneuver their wives. 

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Theo of Golden by Allen Levi: One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there—but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted. In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story. And so portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered. 

A story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is an unforgettable novel about the power of generosity, the importance of connection, and the quiet miracles that happen when we choose kindness and wonder. 

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Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana & Hwang Sunwoo: The big-hearted, bestselling South Korean memoir co-written by two best friends flouting gender norms and societal expectations with their decision to grow old together under one roof. 

When most of their peers were moving in with romantic partners and having children, Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo chose independence—savoring solitude, quiet mornings, and the unmitigated freedom of living alone. But in their forties, something shifted, and they were met with a new, unexpected loneliness. Refusing to settle for the outdated choice between marriage or isolation, Hana and Sunwoo made a radical decision: to buy a home and live together—not as lovers, not as roommates, but as chosen family. 

Now a bustling household of two women and four cats, Hana and Sunwoo still value solitude, but can do so while sharing a life and its meaning with someone else. Together they navigate the challenges and comforts of cohabiting in midlife, the growing pains of interdependence and the unexpected rewards of compromise when you’ve grown set in your ways. From sick days to career wins to aging parents and beach-side retirement plans, they are redefining domestic bliss on their own terms, where love, partnership, and home are defined not by tradition, but by choice. 

With warmth, wit, and sharp social insight, Hana and Sunwoo share their blueprint for building a life outside the scripts of marriage and society’s expectations for women. Two Women Living Together is a quiet revolution—a celebration of female friendship, community, and the many forms that love and family can take. 

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The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe by Richard Rohr and Brian D. Mclaren: “Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates 

In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center. 

Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet. 

Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is. 

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Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux: An original and revealing portrait of the misunderstood French Post-Impressionist artist. 

Paul Gauguin’s legend as a transgressive genius arises as much from his biography as his aesthetically daring Polynesian paintings. Gauguin is chiefly known for his pictures that eschewed convention, to celebrate the beauty of an indigenous people and their culture. In this gorgeously illustrated, myth-busting work, Sue Prideaux reveals that while Gauguin was a complicated man, his scandalous reputation is largely undeserved. 

Self-taught, Gauguin became a towering artist in his brief life, not just in painting but in ceramics and graphics. He fled the bustle of Paris for the beauty of Tahiti, where he lived simply and worked consistently to expose the tragic results of French Colonialism. Gauguin fought for the rights of Indigenous people, exposing French injustices and corruption in the local newspaper and acting as advocate for the Tahitian people in the French colonial courts. His unconventional career and bold, breathtaking art influenced not only Vincent van Gogh, but Matisse and Picasso. 

Wild Thing upends much of what we thought we knew about Gauguin through new primary research, including the resurfaced manuscript of Gauguin’s most important writing, the untranslated memoir of Gauguin’s son, and a sample of Gauguin’s teeth that disproves the pernicious myth of his syphilis. In the first full biography of Paul Gauguin in thirty years, Sue Prideaux illuminates the extraordinary oeuvre of a visionary artist vital to the French avant-garde. The result is “a brilliantly readable and compassionate study of Gauguin―not just as a painter, sculptor, carver and potter, but as a human soul perpetually searching for what is always just out of reach” (Artemis Cooper, Spectator).   

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Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. 

Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. 

A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood. 

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Hope to see everyone on Friday!

Linda Reimer, Southeast Steuben County Library

Southeast Steuben County Library June 2026 Book Club Reminder

Southeast Steuben County Library June 2026 Book Club Reminder

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, just a quick reminder; the June Book Club for Adults gathering is this Friday, June 12, 2026, start time 3:00 p.m.

We’ll be discussing the book “My Name Is Emilia del Valle” by Isabel Allende. The novel is set in the mid-nineteenth century and tells the story of the character of the title, Emilia del Valle. Emilia is born in San Francisco in 1866 the out-of-wedlock daughter of an Irish nun and a Chilean aristocrat. She is raised by her supportive stepfather and grows into a strong willed, independent woman with a passion for writing. As an adult, she finds love and encounters her father while perusing her calling to write. The novel unfolds during the Chilean Civil War. Copies of the back are still available at the Circulation Desk.

Zoom link available upon request; you can request the link by sending an email to: reimerl@stls.org  

Looking forward, our July read is “The Antidote” by Karen Russell. The Antidote is a critically acclaimed novel, which has a bit of everything. It unfolds in the small town of Uz, Nebraska during the Great Depression, during a dust storm, and follows an ensemble cast of characters including prairie witch Antonina Rossi who is something of a counselor for local residents, Harp Oletsky a  man who stood with his parents as Pawnee people were driven from their land – the land his family was settling, Dell Oletsky a 15-year-old basketball prodigy whose mother Lada was just murdered, hobo Clemson Louis Dew who has falsely been convicted of Lada’s murder and Cleo Allfrey, a black New Deal photographer, who doesn’t believe Clemson Dew is guilty.

And looking backwards to our May; in May we read and discussed “Travels With George” by Nathaniel Philbrick. The book was inspired by John Steinbeck’s famous 1962 travelogue “Travels With Charley” which chronicled Steinbeck’s cross-country trip from Maine to California with his wife’s dog Charley. Steinbeck, who was in shaky health, wanted to see America, and what Americans were like; one last time before he passed. Taking a page out of Steinbeck’s book, Nathaiel Philbrick’s goal was to travel the roads George Washington traveled in 1780, to meet and greet Americans and see what their thought and concerns were about the state of the word; after he was elected President and before he settled down to govern. Two hundred and twenty-nine years after Washington made that trip,  Philbrick, accompanied by his wife Melissa and their dog Dora, followed in his footsteps, traveling the same roads and reflecting on the history of the United States, with a strong emphasis on George Washington and the formative years of the country, and pondering the ways that, that history is important today and reflects who we are as a nation.

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer

Southeast Steuben County Library

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults May 2026 Gathering

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults May 2026 Gathering

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, the May book club for adults gathering is this Friday, May 8, 2026.

We’ll be meeting at the library at 3:00 p.m. and discussing the book Travels With George by Nathaniel Philbrick; copies of the book are available at the Circulation Desk if anyone needs a copy. If you’d like to attend the gathering from home, let me know and I’ll send you the Zoom link.

And looking forward to June, as usual we’ll be meeting the second Friday of the month – in June that is Friday, June 12, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

And our June Reads is My Name Is Emilia del Valle: A Novel by Isabel Allende and Frances Riddle; and here the Booklist review of the novel:

Allende has created many addictive sagas about the extended del Valle family and their intersections with history and one another. The eponymous Emilia, Allende’s addition to this notable clan, is one adventurous, gutsy woman. The illegitimate daughter of a Chilean aristocrat and the Irish novice nun he seduced, Emilia grows up in San Francisco with her loving stepfather’s support, intrepidly working around gender restrictions. After penning dime novels pseudonymously, she becomes a human-interest columnist for the Daily Examiner and wangles an assignment as international correspondent for the impending Chilean Civil War of 1891, under her own byline. Emilia’s first meeting with her long-lost father in Santiago is quite moving, and her time with the canteen girls who accompany President Balmaceda’s army echoes with their unsung courage. Allende expertly navigates through the violent chaos of battle and how it affects Emilia, whose romantic relationships also showcase her character growth. Fans of Allende’s now-classic Daughter of Fortune (1999) and Portrait in Sepia (2000) will particularly welcome this offering, which is replete with Allende’s customary poetic storytelling.

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Allende fans are legion and her continuation the del Valle family saga will inspire many requests.

Copies of our June read may also be picked up at the Circulation Desk at any time. 

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults Gathering April 2026

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults Gathering April 2026

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, our April 2026 book club gathering is tomorrow, Friday, April 10, 2026.

We’ll be meeting at the library from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. to discuss the novel the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

A Zoom link is available upon request, if you’d like to join the discussion from home, just send me an email at reimerl@stls.org

Looking forward to May; our May gathering will be held at the library on Friday, May 8, 2026 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Our May Read is:

Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy by Nathaniel Philbrick

Copies of Travels With George may be picked up at the Circulation Desk anytime during library hours of operation.

Here’s an overview of the book:

When George Washington became president in 1789, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative political experiment. Washington undertook a tour of the ex-colonies to talk to ordinary citizens about his new government, and to imbue in them the idea of being one thing—Americans.

In the fall of 2018, Nathaniel Philbrick embarked on his own journey into what Washington called “the infant woody country” to see for himself what America had become in the 229 years since. Writing in a thoughtful first person about his own adventures with his wife, Melissa, and their dog, Dora, Philbrick follows Washington’s presidential excursions: from Mount Vernon to the new capital in New York; a monthlong tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island; a venture onto Long Island and eventually across Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The narrative moves smoothly between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries as we see the country through both Washington’s and Philbrick’s eyes.

Written at a moment when America’s founding figures are under increasing scrutiny, Travels with George grapples bluntly and honestly with Washington’s legacy as a man of the people, a reluctant president, and a plantation owner who held people in slavery. At historic houses and landmarks, Philbrick reports on the reinterpretations at work as he meets reenactors, tour guides, and other keepers of history’s flame. He paints a picture of eighteenth-century America as divided and fraught as it is today, and he comes to understand how Washington compelled, enticed, stood up to, and listened to the many different people he met along the way—and how his all-consuming belief in the union helped to forge a nation.

Have a great day,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults March Gathering This Friday

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults March Gathering This Friday

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, the next Book Club for Adults gathering will be at the library this Friday, March 13, 2026. And will run from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

I have now added Zoom access and you can get the Zoom link by simply letting me know you’d like to join us via Zoom – just send me an email request at: reimerl@stls.org

This month we will be discussing the novel Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven.

We will be meeting in the library’s Conference Room, located in the back of the library, past the Reference Desk from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

And during our March gathering we will discuss our April read, which is is currently Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory; but due to the book not being available in paperback, and only one copy being available within the system to request – I think we should change our April read to a different title – and we can figure out which one at our March gathering. So bring a list of your recent favorite reads with you!

And if you like whimsical reads, check out Mrs. Lilienblum’s Cloud Factory – it is a colorful read – here is a review of the title from the Jewish Book Council site:

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/mrs-lilienblums-cloud-factory

Hope to see you on Friday!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

January Book Club for Adults Gathering Is Today!

January Book Club for Adults Gathering Is Today!

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, our monthly book club gathering for adults is today at 3:00 p.m. at the Southeast Steuben County Library.

Our January Read is The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which discusses in depth for a short book, the differences between a Capitalistic Economy based on scarcity and one that profits the individual versus a natural gift-giving-reciprocal-community building style of economics that fosters a symbiotic relationship among plants/people; the botanist author compares this reciprocally beneficial economy to life in the natural world, and in particular to the way Serviceberry and how they grow and offer sustenance to other plants and animals by their photosynthesis, and how other plants/animals then take their berries and return the favor, for example the birds who eat their seeds, digest them and then drop them in a variety of locations so more Serviceberry plants can grow.

We’ll be meeting from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. and everyone is welcome – no registration is required – simply show up.

In February, we’ll be meeting on, as usual, the second Friday of the month, Friday, February 13 at 3:00 p.m. and we will be discussing the book My Friends by Fredrik Backman, copies of which may be picked up at the Circulation Desk starting today.

Happy reading everyone!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

September Book Club Gathering Is Friday!

September Book Club Gathering Is Friday!

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, the Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults gathering, for September 2025, will be held this Friday, September 12, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. at the library.

Our read for September is The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig. The book, which is in the same ball park, story-telling-format-wise as the movie It’s A Wonderful Life, tells the tale of Nora Seed, a woman in her thirties who regrets decisions she made in her teens and who is having a hard time. Her best friend has moved abroad; she isn’t getting along with her brother and has just lost her job. And to add to all of that her cat just died. So, a distraught Nora attempts suicide and winds up in limbo at a place called The Midnight Library where she will be able to see how making different decisions at different times in her life would have led to different outcomes.

Copies of the book are available at the Circulation Desk and may be picked up at any time.

Looking forward to October, we’ll be meeting on Friday, October 10 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. and our October Read is: Tom Lake: A Novel by Ann Patchett.

Tom Lake relays the story of Lara and her three adult daughters, Emily, Nell and Maisie. The women are confined together at the family’s cherry orchard property during the COVID lock down of 2020; and Lara tells her daughters about her experiences as young actress appearing in a production of Our Town, which was put on by a theater company called Tom Lake.

Copies of Tom Lake too are available at the Circulation Desk and can be picked up at any time.

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Looking to the past, our August 2025 read was a first for this group. We read a graphic novel, A First Time For Everything. The book is a coming of age tale written and illustrated by Dan Santat. The Book won the National Book Award for Youth Literature in 2023 and is based on the real youthful experiences of the author. The main character in the novel is also called Dan, and he has had a challenging time dealing with bullies at school, and starts to mature and find himself while on a school trip to France.

Book club members universally liked the book! We collectively thought it was well written and illustrated by the author, and the story was very accessible.

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Hope to see everyone at our gathering on Friday!

And if you’re new to book club, please feel free to come – everyone is welcome!

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Tel: 607-936-3713 x4214

Email: reimerl@stls.org

August Book Club for Adults Gathering Is Friday, August 8!

August Book Club for Adults Gathering Is Friday, August 8!

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, here is our monthly book club meeting reminder post!

Our August Book Club for Adults gathering will be held at the library this Friday, August 8, from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

We are doing something a bit different this month and reading a graphic novel, A First Time For Everything by Dan Santat.

A First Time For Everything won a National Book Award in 2023 for Young People’s Literature, and it is a bit of a bildungsroman.

And although the book is classified as fiction, it is based on a true story, in essence the experiences of the author Dan Santat who, as most of us do, found it challenging to be young, attending school and dealing with other students who were also finding their way in the world, and not always being kind to others while doing so. The book cumulates with Dan going on a class trip to France and finding his first real girlfriend, and basically, just growing up a bit. The graphics are well done, and it is a reasonably short read, so if you haven’t read it yet – you still have time to do so! Copies of the novel are available at the Circulation Desk.

And looking forward to September, we’ll be meeting on Friday, September 12 and our September read is: The Midnight Library by Matthew Haig, copies of that novel too may be picked up at the Circulation Desk at any time.

Hope everyone is having a good summer, and I hope to see you all on Friday,

Linda Reimer, SSCL

Reminder July Book Club for Adults Gathering is Friday (7.11.25)!

Reminder July Book Club for Adults Gathering is Friday (7.11.25)!

by Linda Reimer ♥ 1 Comment

Hi everyone, just a reminder, the Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults will be gathering for our monthly meeting this Friday, July 11 at 3:00 p.m. 

We’ll be discussing our July Read, Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout; copies of the book are available at the Circulation Desk should anyone need one. 

Looking forward to August, we’ll be meeting on our usual second Friday of the month, on Friday, August 8 at 3 p.m.

And we’ll be doing something different and a bit light in keeping with the summer season and reading the graphic memoir, A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat.

The memoir won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2023, and tells the story of a student named Dan who had been bullied at school; and has low expectations for how his upcoming school trip to France is going to unfold for him; but during the trip he experiences new things and expands his world-view which is thus enriched with possibilities.

And going forward, I will have a printed list both of the books our book club has read, since its inception in 2019, and the titles book club members mentioned during the previous book club meeting ​for all who are interested in reading lists to enjoy.

Hope to see everyone on Friday,

Linda

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults Gathering is Friday, June 13

Southeast Steuben County Library Book Club for Adults Gathering is Friday, June 13

by Linda Reimer ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day everyone!

Linda

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

Our May Book Club Read was Colored Television by Danzy Senna 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Books Read by Book Club Members in the Past Month: 

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

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

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

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The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu and Jesse Kirkwood: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATIONAL BESTSELLER 

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

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

Wrong. 

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

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

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

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The Next Day by Melinda French Gates 

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

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

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

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One Good Thing: A Novel by Georgia Hunter:  

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

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

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

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