DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2018
AT 2:00 P.M.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
EXIT WEST, BY MOHSIN HAMID
BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2018
at 2:00 P.M.
An astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands.
In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city.
When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.
Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time. (From the publisher.)
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
COMMONWEALTH, BY ANN PATCHETT
Book Discussion Date and Time:
Monday, December 18, 2017, at 2:00 P.M.
The Cousins and the Keatings are two California families forever intertwined and permanently shattered by infidelity. Bert Cousins leaves his wife for Beverly Keating, leaving her to raise four children on her own. Beverly, with two children of her own, leaves her husband for Bert. The six children involved are forced to forge a childhood bond based on the combined disappointment in their parents. As adults, they find their families’ stories revealed in a way they couldn’t possibly expect. Patchett has written a family drama that perfectly captures both the absurdity and the heartbreak of domestic life. -- LibraryReads.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
PACHINKO, BY MIN JIN LEE
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2017,
AT 2:00 P.M.
Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.
So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, BY ELIZABETH STROUT
BOOK DISCUSSION DATE AND TIME:
MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2017, AT 2:00 P.M.
An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.
REQUEST A COPY OF THE BOOK
H-WPL READERS DISCUSSION GUIDE
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
NUTSHELL, BY IAN McEWAN
Trudy has betrayed her husband, John. She's still in the marital home -- a dilapidated, priceless London townhouse -- but John's not here. Instead, she's with his brother, the profoundly banal Claude, and the two of them have a plan. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy's womb.
Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world's master storytellers.
Monday, June 19, 2017
THE RENT COLLECTOR, BY CAMRON WRIGHT
Tuesday, July 18, 2017, at 10:30 A.M.
(Our Summer Schedule)
Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Mean Chey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working.
Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the ill-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money — a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past. The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one woman's journey to save her son and another woman's chance at redemption. It demonstrates that even in a dump in Cambodia — perhaps especially in a dump in Cambodia — everyone deserves a second chance.
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