July title

Come by and pick up a copy of our July discussion book Shanghai Girls by Lisa See.  Discussion will take place on Wednesday July 17 at 1 pm by the fireplace in the library.

In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father's prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn't be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown's old ways and rules. At its heart, Shanghai Girls is a story of sisters: Pearl and May are inseparable best friends who share hopes, dreams, and a deep connection, but like sisters everywhere they also harbor petty jealousies and rivalries. They love each other, but each knows exactly where to drive the knife to hurt the other the most. Along the way they face terrible sacrifices, make impossible choices, and confront a devastating, life-changing secret, but through it all the two heroines of this astounding new novel hold fast to who they are: Shanghai girls.    from the hardcover edition

May book

 Come by a pick up a copy of our May discussion book The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian.  Discussion will take place on Wednesday May 15 at 1 pm by the fireplace in the library.

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American.
 Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations. ©Random House

April book

Winner of the ALA ALEX award.  Roland Merullo is also the author of Breakfast with Buddha and Golfing with God. Join us Wednesday April 17th at 1pm. Copies of the book are available to check out at the library.

In rural New Hampshire, teenage girls have been disappearing, snatched from back-country roads, never to be seen alive again. For seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards, the fear raised by these abductions is the backdrop to what she lives with in her own home. Marjorie's parents are so intentionally isolated from society that they have developed their own dialect, a kind of mountain hybrid of English that displays their disdain for the wider world.  Tormented by her classmates, Marjorie is known as "the talk-funny girl"...by turns darkly menacing and bright with resilience, The Talk-Funny Girl is the story of one young woman's remarkable courage, a road map for the healing of childhood abuse, and a testament to the power of kindness and love.  --book jacket

March title

March is flying by and this week is our group meeting for The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler.  Wednesday March 20th at 1pm by the fireplace.

February is Hopkinton READS! month

As part of Hopkinton READS! this month, we will be discussing Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.  There will be two chances to discuss the book with our special guest Kate LaClair. Come join us Wednesday February 27th Thursday February 28th at either 1pm or 7pm.  Copies of the book are available to borrow at the library.  You can also buy a paperback copy for $5, thanks to the Hopkinton Public Library Foundation and provided by YBP. See other programs related to Hopkinton READS! here.

January title

Join us Wednesday January 16th at 1pm for a discussion of The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Copies are available to check out at the library.  The group meets by the library fireplace.

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin was falsely accused of stealing a white man's turkeys and was almost beaten to death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem after learning of the grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster made his trek from Louisiana to California in 1953, embittered by "the absurdity that he was doing surgery for the United States Army and couldn't operate in his own home town." Anchored to these three stories is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively researched study of the "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling, and Pershing settling in new lands, building anew, and often finding that they have not left racism behind. The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate long after the reading is done.  --Publisher Weekly

December title

Join us Wednesday December 12th at 1pm for a discussion of State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. Copies are available to check out at the library.  The group meets by the library fireplace.

 Ann Patchett raises the bar with State of Wonder, a provocative and ambitious novel set deep in the Amazon jungle. Research scientist Dr. Marina Singh is sent to Brazil to track down her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, who seems to have disappeared in the Amazon while working on an extremely valuable new drug. The last person who was sent to find her died before he could complete his mission. Plagued by trepidation, Marina embarks on an odyssey into the insect-infested jungle in hopes of finding answers to the questions about her friend's death, her company's future, and her own past. Once found, Dr. Swenson is as imperious and uncompromising as ever. But while she is as threatening as anything the jungle has to offer, the greatest sacrifices to be made are the ones Dr. Swenson asks of herself, and will ultimately ask of Marina. State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss. It is a tale that leads the reader into the very heart of darkness, and then shows us what lies on the other side.

 In this superbly rendered novel, Patchett (Run) takes the reader into the primitive world of the Amazon in Brazil. Pharmacologist Marina Singh from Minnesota works for the pharmaceutical company Vogel. Her colleague Anders Eckman dies in the jungle while trying to locate Dr. Annick Swenson, who has been working on a fertility drug for Vogel by studying the Lakashi people, whose women bear children into old age. Marina's journey to the Amazon to find the uncommunicative and intimidating Dr. Swen-son and to discover the details of Anders's death is fraught with poisonous snakes and poisonous memories, malarial mosquitoes and sickening losses, but her time among the Lakashi tribe is transformative. VERDICT Not a sentimental view of a primitive people, Patchett's portrayal is as wonderful as it is frightening and foreign. Patchett exhibits an extraordinary ability to bring the horrors and the wonders of the Amazon jungle to life, and her singular characters are wonderfully drawn. Readers who enjoy exotic locales will especially be interested, but all will find this story powerful and captivating. Library Journal c2011.

June title

Join us Wednesday June 20th at 1pm for a discussion of The Faith Club by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner. Copies are available to check out at the library.  The group meets by the library fireplace.

In writing a children's book highlighting the commonalities among the Abrahamic religions, Idliby, an American Muslim of Palestinian descent, sought Christian and Jewish collaborators. She was joined by Episcopalian-turned-Catholic Suzanne Oliver and Jewish children's book writer Warner, who both came to realize they needed to deal with their own questions, stereotypes, and concerns before starting the book. After several meetings, the trio's relationship and project seemed in jeopardy, but they painstakingly worked through their differences, accompanying one another at significant times to each of their places of worship, reading one another's Scripture, and supporting one another's doubts and fears. In the process, the women developed a strong bond that strengthened the way each practiced her own religion and moved them all toward deeper commitment to interfaith dialog, to justice, and to one another. This book, which concludes with suggestions to readers for forming their own Faith Club and includes sample questions for thought, is a documentation of Idliby, Oliver, and Warner's discussions, debates, and reflections. The world needs this book or others very similar! Highly recommended for all libraries.

— Library Journal

May Title

Join us Wednesday May 16th at 1pm for a discussion of Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Copies are available to check out at the library.  The group meets by the library fireplace.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard - their secret hiding place - and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.
Sixty Years Later: Sarah's story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. IN her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own romantic future.

---©St. Martin's Griffin

February Title

On Wednesday February 15th at 1pm we will meet to discuss the book Little Bee by Chris Cleave.  Copies are available to check out at the library.

...This is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

November Book

Our November book selection is Still Alice by Lisa Genova. November 16th at 1pm by the fireplace - pick up your copy of the book today!

Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by a first-time author who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience. Reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind and Ordinary People, this work packs an emotional punch.

October Book

Our October selection is Ernest Hebert's The Old American. Join us by the fireplace on Wednesday October 19th at 1pm.

In 1746 Nathan Blake, the first frame house builder in Keene, New Hampshire, was abducted by Algonkians and held in Canada as a slave. Inspired by this dramatic slice of history, novelist Ernest Hebert has written a masterful novel recreating those years of captivity.
Set in New England and Canada during the French and Indian Wars, The Old American is driven by its complex, vividly imagined title character, Caucus-Meteor. By turns shrewd and embittered, ambitious and despairing, inspired and tormented, he is the self-styled "king" of the remnants of the first native tribes that encountered the English. Caucus-Meteor is a brilliant, cantankerous, visionary figure whom readers will long remember.

September Book

We'll be reading Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains for September. Join us by the fireplace on Wednesday September 21st at 1pm. 

Tracy Kidder gives us the story of one man's inspiring American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him, providing brilliant testament to the power of second chances.  Deo arrives in the United States from Burundi in search of a new life.  Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English, and no contacts.  He ekes out a precarious existence until he meets the strangers who will change his life, pointing him eventually in the the direction of Columbia University, medical school, and a life devoted to healing.  Kidder breaks new ground in telling this unforgettable story as her travels back over a turbulent life and show us what it means to be fully human.   from the book jacket

Summer Community Read

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv brings together research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions and simple ways to heal the broken bond right in our own backyard! This special book discussion will be led by naturalist Scott Semmens on Wednesday evening September 28th at 7pm.  We have copies available right now to check out or paperback copies to purchase for $5 (thanks to YBP and the Hopkinton Library Foundation).

July book

We have a great book for summer reading for our July book choice!  It's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson. Join us on July 20th at 1pm by the fireplace. Stop by for a copy and join us in July or just enjoy on your own!

In the small village of Edgecombe St. Mary in the English countryside lives Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson’s wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, the Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother’s death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and regarding her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?                            readinggroupguides.com

April Book

Jhumpa Lahiri's poignant first novel, The Namesake, builds on the themes of her Pulitzer Prize-winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies.  In The Namesake, the Ganguli family emigrates from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs at the end of the 1960s, shortly after an arranged marriage.  An MIT engineering student, Ashoke is progressive and ready to enter American culture, while his tradition-bound wife, Ashima, desperately misses her Indian home and resists the new world.  When their first child, a boy, is born, they give him the pet name of Gogol, after the Russian writer, whose writings Ashoke believes were instrumental in saving his life.  This tale of three generations sensitively explores the profound conflicts between cultures and generations, the child's search for cultural identity, and the power of acceptance.  ©Random House

Book discussion on Wednesday April 20th at 1pm by the fireplace.  Film showing to be announced!

March book

From the internationally bestselling author of The House at Riverton, an unforgettable new novel that transports the reader from the back alleys of poverty of pre-World War I London to the shores of colonial Australia where so many made a fresh start, and back to the windswept coast of Cornwall, England, past and present.

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book --- a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family. But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.

This is a novel of outer and inner journeys and an homage to the power of storytelling. The Forgotten Garden is filled with unforgettable characters who weave their way through its spellbinding plot to astounding effect.

Morton's novels are #1 bestsellers in England and Australia and are published in more than twenty languages. Her first novel, The House at Riverton, was a New York Times bestseller.

Readinggroupguides.com 

 Please note the discussion will take place on the 4th Wednesday of March which is March 23rd.  It's usually the 3rd Wednesday, but oh well, I just didn't get the books soon enough ;-)

February Book

From the bestselling author of The Double Bind, Midwives, and Skeletons at the Feast comes a novel of shattered faith, intimate secrets, and the delicate nature of sacrifice. "There," says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about . . . angels. Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents' murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice's daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen--who flees the pulpit to be with Heather and see if there is anything to be salvaged from the spiritual wreckage around him. But then the State's Attorney begins to suspect that Alice's husband may not have killed himself. . .and finds out that Alice had secrets only her minister knew. Secrets of Eden is both a haunting literary thriller and a deeply evocative testament to the inner complexities that mark all of our lives. Once again Chris Bohjalian has given us a riveting page-turner in which nothing is precisely what it seems. As one character remarks, "Believe no one. Trust no one. Assume all of our stories are suspect." From the Hardcover edition.

January Book

Our January book selection is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  Join us Wednesday January 19th at 1pm.  Regular and Large Print copies are available to check out at the library.  It is also available as a free ebook download at Project Gutenberg and as both an MP3 and WMA  audiobook download on OverDrive.  No excuse not to read it with all those choices!

December Book

A Girl Named Zippy offers a rare and welcome treat: a memoir of a happy childhood.
Wednesday December 15th at 1pm by the fireplace.  Copies of the book are available to check out at the library.

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people.  Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears.  In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period - people helped their neighbors, went ot church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.

Laced with fine storytelling, sharp wit, dead-on observations, and moments of sheer joy, Haven Kimmel's straight-shooting portrait of her childhood gives us a heroine who is wonderfully sweet and sly as she navigates the quirky adult world that surrounds Zippy.     --from the book cover
 

November book

Join us by the fireplace at the library to discuss The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on Wednesday November 17th at 1pm.  Copies of the book are available at the library to check out.

 The Vine of Desire continues the story of Anju and Sudha, the two young women at the center of Divakaruni's bestselling novel Sister of My Heart [We did this as September's book choice - although you needn't have read this prior to this month's book].  Far from Calcutta, the city of their childhood, and after years of living separate lives, Anju and Sudha rekindle their friendship in America.  The deep-seated love they feel for each other porvides the support each of them needs...a moving and satisfying sequel to Sister of My Heart, The Vine of Desire stands on its own as a novel of extraordinary depth and sensitivity.  Through the eyes of people caught in the clash of cultures, Divakaruni reveals the rewards and the perils of breaking free from the past and the complicated, often contradictory emotions that shape the passage to independence.     --from the book jacket

Hopkinton READS!

There will be two chances to attend the community book discussion of our Hopkinton READS! choice Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.  Betsy Burtis from the New Hampshire Humanities Council will lead discussions on Tuesday, October 26th at 1pm and Thursday October 28th at 7pm.  Burtis is a skilled discussion leader who facilitates both the Humanities Council Literature and Medicine Series and their immigration discussion series.  She is also an adjunct faculty member at Granite State College teaching communication classes, and the current chairperson of the New Hampshire Medical Interpretation Advisory Board (MIAB).

We're back!

Copies of Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni are available for our September book discussion.  Stop by and pick one up.  The group will meet on Wednesday September 15 at 1pm by the fireplace in the library.

Sister of My Heart is about how the lives of two women are changed by marriage, as one woman comes to California, and the other stays behind in India. Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite these differences, since the day the two girls were born—the same day their fathers died, mysteriously and violently—Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates, as well as their hearts, are merged.   ....from the author's website.

Book Group vacation

The Afternoon Book Group will meet again in September.  Have a great summer!