Book Discussion On The
Long Island Reads 2021
Award-Winning Novel
Wednesday April 28
at 2:00 PM
JOIN LIVE AUTHOR EVENT WITH
BRIT BENNETT
SUNDAY APRIL 11, 2021 AT
For Free Eventbrite Tickets visit
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
THE PULL OF THE STARS, BY EMMA DONOGHUE
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
at 2:00 PM
Access the Discussion
through the Events Calendar at www.hwpl.org
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders -- Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police , and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue (Room) once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue (Room) once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.
Friday, January 29, 2021
Monday, December 21, 2020
Monogamy, by Sue Miller
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
at 2:00 PM
Book Discussion on Zoom
Graham and Annie have been married for almost thirty years, a loving, successful marriage. Graham is a bookseller, and a large man in every sense – big as a bear, gregarious, a lover of life and the host of frequent, lively parties at the home he shares with Annie. At the moment the narrative begins, Graham has had a short, impulsive affair, one he regrets almost instantly and is determined to end.
Annie is smaller, more reserved, maybe more unknowable, something her daughter Sarah has accused her of in her adolescence. She’s a photographer, about to have her first show in five years, anxious that her best years professionally may be behind her.
Graham’s sudden death and Annie’s discovery of his infidelity propel the action of the book, which traces her in her pain and confusion; and follows also the others affected by Graham’s death – his first wife, Frieda, and Lucas, his son with her; as well as Sarah, Graham and Annie’s child together.
This is a novel about marriage, then, and loss. About family, and the secrets they keep from one another. About the transformative power of memory, and the triumph of love over death itself.
Friday, November 20, 2020
CIRCE, BY MADELINE MILLER
ZOOM BOOK DISCUSSION
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 16, 2020
AT 2:00 PM
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch, whose commanding narrates Miller's dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe , a nymph who turns Odysseus' crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: "When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist." (from Kirkus)
Friday, October 23, 2020
THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE: A SAGA OF CHURCHILL, FAMILY, AND DEFIANCE DURING THE BLITZ, BY ERIK LARSON
JOIN OUR ONLINE DISCUSSION
LINK TO OUR ZOOM DISCUSSION FROM THE EVENTS CALENDAR
AT WWW.HWPL.ORG
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 18th
AT 2:00 PM
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports--some released only recently--Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill's "Secret Circle," to whom he turns in the hardest moments. (www.penguinrandomhouse.com)
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
OLIVE, AGAIN, BY ELIZABETH STROUT
HWPL Readers
Book Discussion on Zoom
Wednesday, October 21
At 2:00 PM
Click here to join Zoom discussion
Ten years after Elizabeth Strout won a Pulitzer Prize for her eponymous collection of linked stories about Olive Kitteridge, a difficult but endearing, retired but not retiring middle school math teacher, she returns to coastal Maine with an update — which is just as wonderful as the original.
You don't have to have read Olive Kitteridge to appreciate Olive, Again, but you'll probably want to. Like a base coat of paint, it adds depth and helps the finish colors pop. Explaining the genesis of her sequel, Strout has written, "That Olive! She continues to surprise me, continues to enrage me, continues to sadden me, and continues to make me love her." (NPR)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)