Aug 2025 - Their Eyes Were Watching God


Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

by Zora Neale Hurston

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Discussion at 1pm

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer"

--Zora Neale Hurston

An immersive narrative that tells of Janie Crawford's ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny. Rural Florida in the 1920's and 30s.

Discounted copies available at Gibson's in Concord, and MainStreet BookEnds in Warner. Audio on hoopla. E-book available at Faded Page.

Discussion Questions:

Resources for the book and about the author (may contain spoilers) :

Keep reading:

  • Hurston's other books -- a full list here.
  • Alice Walker's The Color Purple (FIC WAL), is another of my (Sarah) favorite books of all time. It seems a natural follow up to Their Eyes. Also a coming of age story about a girl under the thumb of men and poverty coming into her own. Walker was very much influenced by Hurston. This 2 min video offers just a peak at why. 
  • Biographies of Hurston, including her autobiography, and this group bio Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists [including Hurston] Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century. (by George King, 920 KIN)
  • Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones (a contemporary read-a-like; FIC WAR)
  • Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (FIC MOR)
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July 2025 - Gather

 Gather by Kenneth M. Cadow: 9781536239911 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Discussion at 1pm

"Gather is about gathering together resources, people, and love. Kenneth M. Cadow tells a story about finding value in what--and who--might be easily overlooked.

--National Book Foundation Judges 

Gather (2023)

by Kenneth M. Cadow 

 [Cah' dough]

Ian Gray isn’t supposed to have a dog, but a lot of things that shouldn’t happen end up happening anyway. And Gather, Ian’s adopted pup, is good company now that Ian has to quit the basketball team, find a job, and take care of his mom as she tries to overcome her opioid addiction. Despite the obstacles thrown their way, Ian is determined to keep his family afloat no matter what it takes. And for a little while, things are looking up: Ian makes friends, and his fondness for the outdoors and for fixing things lands him work helping neighbors. But an unforeseen tragedy results in Ian and his dog taking off on the run, trying to evade a future that would mean leaving their house and their land. Even if the community comes together to help him, would Ian and Gather have a home to return to? Told in a wry, cautious first-person voice, Kenneth M. Cadow’s resonant novel, a 2023 National Book Award Finalist, brings an emotional and ultimately hopeful story of one teen’s resilience in the face of unthinkable hardships.

Resources for the book:

Discussion prompts:  (spoilers) [some from Candlewick Press or Read with Reagan]

  1. What meanings does the word gather have for Ian?
  2. Ian discusses different kinds of intelligence and learning. He contrasts typical school subjects like math and history with the skills and knowledge that make it possible to survive in the country. Do you think one of these types of knowledge is better or more important than the other? Do you think high school does an adequate job of preparing people for adulthood?
  3. How did the first-person perspective affect the reading experience for you? 
  4. Do you think names (like Gather, The Sharpe, Ian vs. Dorian) affect how a person behaves, who they become, and how others treat them?
  5. Throughout the story, we meet a cast of characters who are all trying their best to get by. What was your favorite example of a person making a decision that is right for them, but wrong for others?
  6. Ian keeps a lot of his thoughts and struggles to himself. Do you think this more helped or hurt him
  7. What does storytelling (as both teller and listener) represent to Ian?
  8. How does classism affect the incident with the shirt (p. 218)? Where else in the book do you see evidence of classism? Where do we see classism in our community? Does the book offer any insight that can affect change?
  9. Ian is tied to the land like few others. He says, “I am the woods and the fields and the bass and the trout from our rivers and streams. You are what you eat, you are what you do, and everything I ever learned to do, I learned here, in my town and on our land” (page 232). How does Ian's landscape inform the story? Does your own sense of place run as strongly through your veins as it does for Ian?
  10. When Ian discovers that it is Sylvia’s family that has posted “no hunting” signs on the land where he used to hunt, he feels like he has been “eating with the enemy” (p.160), and yet they are all so nice. How do you / does he reconcile those two things.

Go beyond the book:

Read-a-likes in the HTL collection: (for various reasons)

  • Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (FIC SAL, coming of age, stream of consciousness)
  • Nunez's novel The Friend (FIC NUN, also the new movie adaptation on DVD) (big dog offers support during grief and hardship)
  • Cohen's Harry's Trees (FIC COH, grief, gathering new people, value of nature)
  • Ward's Salvage the Bones (FIC WAR, poor, rural teenagers dealing with unthinkable hardships that include family trauma)
  • Kingsolver's Pulitzer Prize-winning Demon Copperhead (FIC KIN, LP KIN) the blurb notes: "this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival." )

 

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June 2025 - Sea of Tranquility

 

Wednesday, June 18, 2025 

at 1pm 

Join us to discuss the novel:

Sea of Tranquility (2022)

by Emily St. John Mandel

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. (from the publisher)

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core. 
 
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. 
 
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

Resources: 

Book-adjacent Resources:

  • I haven't found anywhere why she titled the book Sea of Tranquility, beyond it being a moon reference. (Did anyone else?). But here, you can learn more about Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) - the geographic feature on the moon. The feature (a mare within a basin) was named this in 1651 by Italian astronomers. It contains Tranquility Base, where Apollo 11's Eagle landed in 1969.
  • More books set during a pandemic: Waterstone's list,  BookRiot's list.
  • If you enjoyed this, check out Mandel's other books. Some have recurring characters (Vincent and Mirella are in The Glass Hotel).

 

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May 2025 - The Map of Salt and Stars

Wednesday, May 21, 2025 

1pm only

Join us to discuss the novel:

The Map of Salt and Stars (2018)

by Zeyn Joukhadar (zhouk'-guh-dar)

This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel, the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker—places today’s headlines in the sweep of history, where the pain of exile and the triumph of courage echo again and again. (from the publisher)

It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour’s mother once knew is changing, and it isn’t long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee as refugees across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety. As their journey becomes more and more challenging, Nour’s idea of home becomes a dream she struggles to remember and a hope she cannot live without.

More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune. Disguising herself as a boy named Rami, she becomes an apprentice to al-Idrisi, who has been commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily to create a map of the world. In his employ, Rawiya embarks on an epic journey across the Middle East and the north of Africa where she encounters ferocious mythical beasts, epic battles, and real historical figures.

A deep immersion into the richly varied cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, The Map of Salt and Stars follows the journeys of Nour and Rawiya as they travel along identical paths across the region eight hundred years apart, braving the unknown beside their companions as they are pulled by the promise of reaching home at last.

 Resources for the novel:

Read more:

In the news right now:


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April 2025 - The Six

 

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

1pm and 5:30pm

Join us to discuss:

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts

by Loren Grush

“Remarkable...Grush has an important story to tell, and she tells it well. An inspiring story of the first American women to go into space, charting their own course for the horizon.” —Kirkus Reviews

When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight. Eventually, though, NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.

In The Six, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic—and sometimes deeply sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride’s history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.

Copies available to borrow at the library, or for purchase at a discount from Gibson's and MainStreet BookEnds. 

Resources for the text: 

Extras to enhance your reading: 
Keep reading:

Discussion prompts:

1. This is history we all lived through in part or whole (most of us). What surprised you most? 

2. What part of the training sounded most exciting/terrifying/easy/difficult to you?

3. The Six were varied in their professional backgrounds - surgeon, electrical engineer, geologist, physicist, chemist, and biochemist. The other members of TFNG class were similarly varied in their expertise. How did this change our ideas about space exploration?


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March 2025 - Persuasion

 

*
Wednesday, March 19, 2025

1pm and 5:30pm

Join us to discuss the novel:
Persuasion (1818)

 by Jane Austen 

(2025 marks her 250th birthday!)

Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion—the story of a second chance at true love—is widely regarded as the most moving.

Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up.

Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne’s never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in Persuasion.

Copies available to borrow at the library, or for purchase at a discount from Gibson's and MainStreet BookEnds. 

Resources for the text: 

Extras to enhance your reading: 
Keep reading:

Discussion prompts:

1. (Why) does this still resonate?  

2. Interesting that we don't meet Anne right away. How/does the first line and opening chapter work to introduce the book?

[more to come]

 

*There are so many editions of Persuasion that I didn't choose any published covers. Instead, I created my own image for this blog and our promo materials using an AI image creator in Canva. I have very mixed feelings on using AI. Happy to chat about it. If you want to learn how I did it (it took all of three minutes), come on in to the library and ask me for a demonstration. I do think it's important to know how it works and what's out there as it's not likely to go away and knowledge is power.

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February 2025 - author Linnea Hartsuyker (The Half-Drowned King)

 "Lovers of epic rejoice! Hartsuyker illuminates these old stories with authority and visceral detail, bringing to life the adventure, bleak beauty, and human struggle that lie at their heart. A vivid and gripping read." -- Madeline Miller, author of CIRCE and THE SONG OF ACHILLES


In February and March we have three events surrounding the Golden Wolf Saga trilogy by Linnea Hartsuyker. Come back to this page for updates.

Please join us in the library's Community Room for a meet-the-author event on February 19, 2025, at 5:30pm.  Linnea Hartsuyker, author of The Golden Wolf Saga, an epic tale of 9th century Norway, will be at the library to discuss her novels and related aspects of Viking culture. Books will be available for purchase (and signing) at the event, courtesy of MainStreet Bookends of Warner.

Earlier on Feb. 19, at 1pm, our monthly book group will be discussing the first book in the saga, The Half-Drowned King. Anyone may join. Books are available to borrow at the library. Call ahead to reserve a copy.
 
We are also welcoming Ms. Hartsuyker back to the library on March 9th for an afternoon of Viking craft - a discussion of fiber arts and some hands-on activity. Stay tuned for more details.
 
Resources:
 
About the author:
About Vikings and Norwegian History


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Our Top Checkouts, and Year-End Book Lists 2024

Hopkinton Town Library's Top Check Outs in 2024

Compare our list to the New York Public Library's www.nypl.org/spotlight/top-checkouts-2024 (We have one building and about 6,000 residents; they have 92 branch libraries across Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island!)

 

The value of year-end book lists. 

Lately, as I've been generating the lists above and planning our "what's the best thing you read in 2024" meeting, I've been reading about year-end book lists. If you're also into that kind of thing, here are some interesting reads:

  • Book critic and blogger Jan Harayda talks about being wary of anything titled "best books": jansplaining.substack.com/p/why-you-cant-trust-years-best-book  Please do read the whole post, but here's a brow-raising quote: It’s also striking that eight of 10 books¹ on the Times list come from Penguin Random House imprints. Is PRH really issuing 80% of America’s best books?
  • Similarly, this piece by NPR questions the value of "top ten" type book lists, specifically library checkout records. www.npr.org/2024/12/29/nx-s1-5234258/most-borrowed-library-books-2024 To me, this was an important point from this article: Year-end lists are fun to parse, but it's important to keep perspective, said Brian Bannon, the Meryl and James Tisch Director at the New York Public Library. He oversees the 88 neighborhood branches of the nation's largest library system. "Even though we published our top ten, none of these books made up more than 1% of our overall circulation," he said.
  • And this post by blogger "Modern Mrs. Darcy" explores the book influencer's own distinction between favorite and best and the natural subjectivity of both labels: I gather my “favorite” books, which aren’t necessarily the “best” ones, and either way those assessments are personal and subjective. When I call a book a favorite, I mean that it delivered a memorable, enjoyable reading experience. I’m drawn to books with emotional resonance, I like discussion-starters, I appreciate craft. I’m also inclined to value a book that meets the moment: when I read the right book at the right time, it’s likely to end up here. On the flip side, I read many very good books that might have deserved a place on a “best of” list, but not on my list of personal favorites. (HTL's previous blog post gave pointers on reflecting on your own reading journey, so I won't repeat that here.)

Thoughts?

If, like I do, you find best of lists still valuable, albeit with the above caveats, here are a few:

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January 2025 - Show and Tell


In concert with the library's "The Best Thing You Checked Out" survey, our book group will discuss favorite reads from the past year. (The books don't have to have been published in 2024.)

Join us Wednesday, January 15, at 1pm and/or 5:30. Bring copies, or just the titles/authors, of your "bests" and tell us what worked to make them memorable. You'll leave with a whole list of recommendations for your TBR list (to-be-read).  

Below are questions to guide a reflection of your reading year. Below that is a list of suggestions for setting reading goals for 2025. 

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2024 Year-End Reading Reflection

If you are interested in understanding what your reading year reveals about your interests and perspectives throughout the year, start with these reflection questions based on the books you read in 2024 (if you kept track):

  • Patterns: Which genres did you gravitate towards? Were there recurring themes, settings, motifs, or plotlines in your list?
  • Favorite authors: Were there authors you discovered or revisited this year? What qualities of their books work for you? What about their writing style did you like?
  • Personal connection: How did the books relate to your own life experiences? Is that kind of connection important to you when choosing/enjoying a book?
  • Personal growth: Which books challenged your perspectives or provided new insights into the world or your own experiences? Did any books significantly change your mind about or understanding of a topic? Did any prove applicable to your current situation?
  • Relatable Characters: Which characters stayed with you? Did you feel kinship with any? Which viewpoints offered you a “mirror” versus a “window”?
  • Rejected reads: What books did you abandon? What didn’t work for you?
  • Biggest impact or “best” books: Think about the five or so titles that most worked for you this year. What about them left the strongest impression on you? Was it the story? Writing style? A particular character? Or maybe the way it met you where you are (in that moment, in life, etc.)?

Use this reflection to inform your future TBR lists or reading goals. Maybe the exercise solidified what you know about your reading interests, but maybe it also revealed some tendencies you didn’t previously realize.

If you enjoy this kind of introspection, check out these resources:

www.onbookstreet.com/blog/reading-year-reflection-and-new-years-intentions

www.onceuponabookclub.com/blogs/ya/the-power-of-reflection-learning-from-what-we-read

www.journalreview.com/stories/reflecting-on-a-year-of-reading,103834

lib.d.umn.edu/research-collections/find-what-read-next/reflection-questions

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Set Reading Goals for 2025

For example, your goals might include items like…

 Start a reading reflection journal:

  • This post: www.anythinklibraries.org/blog/year-books, might inspire you to pick up a pen and write more (more words, more often, more thoughtfully) about the books you read.
  • While reading -- Jot down thoughts, feelings, key takeaways, quotes/lines that resonate, and questions that arise. 
  • When you finish -- Write about worked for you (or didn’t) in the book. List the themes, your favorite scene or character. It’s ok if each entry is different in size, scope, or tone.

 Create (more than one) TBR list:

  • Choose themes, authors, or settings, etc., that you want to explore in 2025 and make a short TBR for each.
  • Read more from authors you know you enjoy.
  • Pick up a new-to-you series, so you’ll always have something to read next, or in between other reads.
  • Work off someone else’s list – maybe choose a few books from the NYT “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” list or from Tookie’s List in the back of The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich.
  • This post: www.apartmenttherapy.com/reading-list-guide-37016621 has some helpful prompts for creating your TBR, like: lists for different moods, decide which unread books should rollover, and mix in short stories.
  • Make a short list and a long list. The short list is less negotiable – you want to read these books, and soon. The long list is more like, “maybe this year,” or just “maybe.”

Accept a reading challenge:

Schedule (more) reading time:

Discuss books more often:

  • Join (or start!) a book group. HTL’s group meets monthly on the third Wednesday. Talk to us if you want advice on starting a group (here or at your home) or connecting to an existing local group.
  • Initiate a regular meet-up with friends or co-workers to talk about what you’ve been reading. Trade favorites.
  • Write short reviews of books you borrowed from HTL. We’ll post them on the shelf so others might benefit from your reflection.
  • Attend an author event, like HTL’s evening with Linnea Hartsuyker (Feb. 19).


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