Book Discussion Groups
Our AAPI Month title is Thousand Cranes Yasunari Kawabata. We will be virtual again this month.
Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead. REGISTER HERE.
For National Poetry Month, we’ll be discussing selections from Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets. To receive a copy of the selected poems, please email programs@maplewoodlibrary.org.
We’ll be meeting on Zoom this month. Register here.
Our March title is Middlemarch by George Eliot
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Through interweaving stories, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama.
The group will meet via Zoom this month. REGISTER HERE.
Our Black History Month read is Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.
Register here to attend via Zoom.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our January read is On Beauty by Zadie Smith, a wise, hilarious story of an interracial family whose misadventures in the culture wars serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political.
Register here to attend online
Upcoming titles:
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our December title is Howards End by E.M. Forster
In turn-of-the-century England, a strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life.
Upcoming titles are:
January: On Beauty by Zadie Smith
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our Native American Heritage Month title is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, and that the awakening of an ecological consciousness requires a celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our October title is The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Based on real events, this work of historical fiction is set against a missing-heir trial that divided Victorian England. Who gets to tell their story, and who is to be believed?
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our September title is Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli
An emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family on the brink of a crisis, whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border. Register here to attend via Zoom.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our August title is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Inspired by Dickens’ David Copperfield, this brilliant novel enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity. Register to attend on Zoom.
Our July title is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towle
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Register to attend virtually.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our Pride Month title is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. It paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. Register to attend virtually.
This is a virtual only event
AAPI Month read is the short story “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami. Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures.
Our April title is Under Milk Wood; a Play for Voices by Dylan Thomas
A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh town, the play begins with dreams and ghosts before dawn and closes “as the rain of dusk brings on the bawdy night.”
Our Women’s History Month title is The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray. J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, had to go to great lengths to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual. REGISTER TO ATTEND VIRTUALLY.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our Black History Month title is Jazz by Toni Morrison. This profound story of love and obsession is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life.It transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery.
To attend via Zoom, REGISTER HERE.
Our January title is The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
A contemporary Gothic horror story. In turbulent 1960s London, Harriet and David Lovatt manage to keep their family safely detached from outside turmoil--until the birth of their fifth child, who is gruesome and violent, and whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.
We’re reading two titles for December: Flush by Virginia Woolfe and Timbuktu by Paul Auster.
Flush, the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog offers insight into the poet’s life, but is seen by some as a commentary on a number of issues.
In the rich and compelling Timbuktu, Mr. Bones is the canine witness to his homeless owner’s illness and travels.
REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.
Our November title is All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginsburg
This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy through the war years. Foremost are two families, for whom personal events may be as maiming as the tragedies of war. The novel gives a sharp portrait of a society hungry for change, but betrayed by war.
Our October title is Recitatif by Toni Morrison
In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom.
Toni Morrison describes her only short story as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial."
To attend via Zoom, REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.
In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom
Our September title is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.
In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom
Our August title is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
This post-colonial prequel to Jane Eyre tells the background story of the “madwoman in the attic”. Antoinette Cosway is a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom
Our July title is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
This classic romantic novel revolutionized fiction. Jane's independence, fortitude, and intelligence render her one of literature's strongest female characters. Set in the mysterious Thornfield Hall, Bronte’s development of the relationship between Jane and Rochester is peerless.
This meeting will be both in-person at Hilton Branch and virtual.
lOur Pride Month title is Just Kids by Patti Smith
A tenderly evocative memoir, that captures Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as young artists, when they were bohemian and completely unknown. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions.
Upcoming titles: July: Jane Eyre, July: Wide Sargasso Sea, September: Anna Karenina
Our AAPI Month read is The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
This novel deftly explores the complexities of female friendship and introduces readers to the remarkably strong and spirited female divers of Jeju Island. It’s also an eye-opening portrait of a country ravaged by decades of conflict and unrest, and a searing examination of the effects that foreign intervention can have on the evolution of a nation and of course individual lives. REGISTER HERE.
A reading and discussion of selected poetry. For a copy of the selections, please email programs@maplewoodlibrary.org after registering. REGISTER
Our Women’s History Month title is The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
This gem of a historical novel features an indomitable heroine navigating a community steeped in racial intolerance. Readers will adore the memorable Cussy and appreciate Richardson's fine rendering of rural Kentucky life. REGISTER
Our Black History Month title is Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
“Fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny, Harlem Shuffle is a novel about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel.” (San Francisco Chronicle) Register here.
Our January title is Stoner by John Williams. REGISTER HERE.
This deeply moving classic follows the life of a quiet English professor who, after escaping his poor roots, finds only disappointment and heartache and gives himself fully to his profound love of literature.
Our December title is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
A failed bank robber escapes into a building and bursts into a real estate open house, left with no option but to take all prospective buyers hostage. The captives are a very sundry mix of characters, each of them carrying a lifetime of grievances, secrets and passions that are ready to boil over. As the authorities and media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in motion an unexpected chain of events. Humorous and compassionate, Anxious People is, as is the spirit of December celebrations, about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness and hope; the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.
Our November title is The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery.
Renée, the middle-aged and essentially invisible concierge at an elegant Paris hotel, secretly devours art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With biting humor, she scrutinizes the lives of her wealthy but culturally inferior tenants. Twelve-yea-old Paloma, who lives in the building, decides to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. She hides her extraordinary intelligence behind the mask of an average pre-teen. Paloma and Renée believe the world will not appreciate their finest qualities, but after a wealthy Japanese man arrives in the building, they begin to recognize each other as kindred souls. This novel exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us, and celebrates the rich lives often hidden beneath conventional exteriors.
