VINEGAR GIRL, BY ANNE TYLER

Vinegar Girl: the Taming of the Shrew Retold, by Anne Tyler

Book discussion date and time: Monday, January 9, 2017, at 2:00 P.M. 

About Vinegar Girl

Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies
Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. 
Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.
When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?

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Thirteen Ways of Looking, by Colum McCann

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
 MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2016, AT 1:00 P.M. 

Four unforgettable stories by the author of Let the Great World Spin, and winner of The National Book Award.  In the exuberant title novella, a retired judge reflects on his life’s work, unaware as he goes about his daily routines that this particular morning will be his last. In “Sh’khol,” a mother spending Christmas alone with her son confronts the unthinkable when he disappears while swimming off the coast near their home in Ireland. In “Treaty,” an elderly nun catches a snippet of a news report in which it is revealed that the man who once kidnapped and brutalized her is alive, masquerading as an agent of peace. And in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” a writer constructs a story about a Marine in Afghanistan calling home on New Year’s Eve.  

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THE INVENTION OF WINGS, BY SUE MONK KIDD

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2016, AT 2:00 P.M.

Sarah Grimké was an actual early abolitionist and feminist whose upbringing in a slaveholding Southern family made her voice particularly controversial. Kidd re-imagines Sarah's life in tandem with that of a slave in the Grimké household. In 1803, 11-year-old Sarah receives a slave as her birthday present from her wealthy Charleston parents. Called Hetty by the whites, Handful is just what her name implies--sharp tongued and spirited. Precocious Sarah is horrified at the idea of owning a slave but is given no choice by her mother, a conventional Southern woman of her time who is not evil but accepts slavery (and the dehumanizing cruelties that go along with it) as a God-given right.

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THE ODD WOMAN AND THE CITY, BY VIVIAN GORNICK

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2016 AT 2:00 P.M.

"A contentious, deeply moving ode to friendship, love, and urban life in the spirit of Fierce Attachments A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city (New York) that has done the same. Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick's exchange of more than twenty years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has "shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy" she has known. The exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator's continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful. In Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees. Written as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, The Odd Woman and the City beautifully bookends Gornick's acclaimed Fierce Attachments, in which we first encountered her rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis"-- Provided by publisher.  

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Oprah's Book Club Pick: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

It's always noteworthy when Oprah Winfrey announces a new selection for her book club:

WATCH HER VIDEO ANNOUNCEMENT

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AS CLOSE TO US AS BREATHING, BY ELIZABETH POLINER

BOOK CLUB DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: 
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2016, AT 11:00 A.M.
In 1948, a small stretch of the Woodmont, Connecticut shoreline, affectionately named “Bagel
Beach,” has long been the summer destination for Jewish families. Here, sisters Ada, Vivie, and Bec assemble at their beloved family cottage, with children in tow and weekend-only husbands who arrive each Friday in time for the Sabbath meal. During the week, freedom reigns. But when a terrible accident occurs on the sisters’ watch , a summer of hope and self-discovery transforms into a lifetime of atonement and loss.

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THE DIVER'S CLOTHES LIE EMPTY

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2016, AT 11:00 A.M.
From the acclaimed author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers comes a tensely drawn, spellbinding literary thriller that gets to the heart of what defines us as human beings—the singular identity we create for ourselves in the world and the myriad alternative identities that lie just below the surface.

In Vendela Vida’s taut and mesmerizing novel of ideas, a woman travels to Casablanca, Morocco, on mysterious business. Almost immediately, while checking into her hotel, she is robbed, her passport and all identification stolen. The crime is investigated by the police, but the woman feels there is a strange complicity between the hotel staff and the authorities—she knows she’ll never see her possessions again.

Stripped of her identity, she feels both burdened by the crime and liberated by her sudden freedom to be anyone at all.  

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View a video interview with Vendela Vida 

LISTEN TO VENDELA VIDA TALK ABOUT HER BOOK ON NPR'S FRESH AIR 

READ A BOOK REVIEW FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES 

MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, BY ELIZABETH STROUT

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2016, AT 1:00 P.M.

Set in the mid-1980s, Lucy Barton, hospitalized for nine weeks, is surprised when her estranged mother shows up at her bedside. Her mother talks of local gossip, but underneath the banalities, Lucy senses the love that cannot be expressed. This is the story that Lucy must write about, the one story that has shaped her entire life. A beautiful lyrical story of a mother and daughter and the love they share. -- Catherine Coyne for LibraryReads.

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THE BETRAYERS, BY DAVID BEZMOZGIS

Book discussion date and time: Monday, May 9, 2016, at 11:00 A.M.  Please note that we are meeting in the morning this month.)

Escaping his political opponents in a Crimean resort town, disgraced Israeli politician Baruch Kotler runs into a former friend who had him sent to the gulag forty years prior and must reconcile with his betrayer and his own poor choices.

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Read a review and author interview from the Jewish Book Council 

Read a review from the New York Times 

LEAVING TIME, BY JODI PICOULT

 DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2016 AT 1:00 P.M.   

"Alice Metcalf was a devoted mother, loving wife, and accomplished scientist who studied grief among elephants. Yet it's been a decade since she disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind her small daughter, husband, and the animals to which she devoted her life. All signs point to abandonment . . . or worse. Still Jenna--now thirteen years old and truly orphaned by a father maddened by grief--steadfastly refuses to believe in her mother's desertion. So she decides to approach the two people who might still be able to help her find Alice: a disgraced psychic named Serenity Jones, and Virgil Stanhope, the cynical detective who first investigated her mother's disappearance and the death of one of her mother's co-workers. Together these three lonely souls will discover truths destined to forever change their lives. Deeply moving and suspenseful, Leaving Time is a radiant exploration of the enduring love between mothers and daughters"-- Provided by publisher. 

The Long Island Reads Committee is pleased to announced that we have selected Leaving Time by Long Island native Jodi Picoult!

Why Leaving Time?
♦ Jodi Picoult, a Nesconset, Long Island native, has written 23 best-selling novels.
♦ Leaving Time is a NYT best seller and was called “poignant . . . an entertaining tale about parental love, friendship, loss” by The Washington Post.
♦ This title offers a variety of topics and themes which lend themselves to programming and book discussions, including psychic phenomena, elephant behavior and conservation, the loss of a parent, and human/animal connections.
♦ This title will appeal to readers of all ages as well as fans of mysteries, animal stories, or women’s fiction.
♦Leaving Time is available in hardcover, paperback, book on CD, large print and downloadable formats.
♦ Long Island Reads will honor Jodi in person at an award ceremony in April 2016

 

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MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, BY ELENA FERRANTE

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2016, AT 1:00 P.M.

In a poor, midcentury Italian neighborhood, two girls, Elena and Lila, exhibit remarkable intelligence early in school, at a time when money is scarce and education a privilege, especially for girls. Through the lives of these two friends, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.

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THE FICTION OF ELENA FERRANTE

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WHO IS ELENA FERRANTE?

GOD HELP THE CHILD, BY TONI MORRISON

BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2016, AT 1:00 P.M.

Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life; but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love until she told a lie that ruined the life of an innocent woman, a lie whose reverberations refuse to diminish . . . Booker, the man Bride loves and loses, whose core of anger was born in the wake of the childhood murder of his beloved brother . . . Rain, the mysterious white child, who finds in Bride the only person she can talk to about the abuse she's suffered at the hands of her prostitute mother . . . and Sweetness, Bride's mother, who takes a lifetime to understand that "what you do to children matters. And they might never forget."

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 Read "The Radical Vision of Toni Morrison," featured in the New York Times Magazine