August 2026 - The Secret Garden

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.

The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett  (1911)

From the publisher: Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved classic tells the story of  Mary Lennox, a spoiled orphan who leaves India to live with her cold uncle in his dreary mansion in England. When Mary hears of a secret garden kept locked for ten years, she is determined to find it and tend it back to life. With the help of her uncle’s sickly son and a boy who knows all about nature, Mary secretly transforms the garden – and all of their lives.
 

Notes: 

• Audiobook: The audio version on Libby is abridged/full cast. It is unabridged online in audiobook at Librivox (free to all). Also available on hoopla (unabridged is 8 hours or so).
• Full text as e-book at Project Gutenberg
• HTL has the book, the 1993 film on DVD, a recent graphic novel adaptation, and audiobook CDs, as well as an abridged book for children. Right now, we also have lots of extra copies of the book and a Large Print copy to borrow.

Resources: 

• A biographical sketch of Burnett at Literary Ladies Guide. 
• Discussion questions from Victoria Magazine
• Reader's Guide at Penguin RandomHouse 

Keep reading:

• A Little Princess, Burnett's other children's classic, does hold up (in my opinion) 
• "My Robin" is an essay Burnett wrote about a robin she "knew" in real life in the gardens at Maytham Hall (full text online). 

Go beyond:

• If you find yourself in NYC, check out the Burnett Fountain in Central Park.
• Visit (or visit virtually) the garden in England that inspired the secret garden in the book: Great Maytham Hall in Kent. More history of that site here.

July - Remember Us and Another Brooklyn

Remember Us (2024) and Another Brooklyn (2015) 

two (short novels) by Jacqueline Woodson

July 15, 2026 at 1pm 

 

Resources:

• Author's homepage
• About Another Brooklyn ; about Remember Us
• Images of 1970s Brooklyn 
• Background on the Blackout and fires of 1977 
• A recipe for Shrimp Etouffee, because that sounded yummy
• WNBA history (started in 1996) 
• A brief history of The Vulcan Society

If you like these books, try these next:

• more by Woodson (I recommend her picture book The World Belonged to Us because it is also set in late 1970s Brooklyn)
• Jason Reynolds (one of my favorite authors, try Ghost or The Boy in the Black Suit if you liked Remember Us) and Kwame Alexander [Woodson dedicated Remember Us to these two authors] (both are mostly YA/J)
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith (I haven't read this in ages, but it seems fitting) (adult)
• Kin, by Tayari Jones (adult)
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor, was an influential book for Woodson. (J)
• Gather, by Kenneth Cadow (YA)

 

June - Founding Mothers

Founding Mothers (2005)

by Cokie Roberts

Wednesday, June 17, at 1pm 

Legendary journalist Cokie Roberts' New York Times bestseller, Founding Mothers, is an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families—and their country—proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.

Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of  fascinating women in the American Revolution, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington—proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might have never survived.

 Resources:

• The Westwood (Mass) Public Library has created a page with author bio, discussion questions and read-a-likes.
• A University of California interview with Cokie Roberts shortly after the book was published. 
• A virtual exhibit on "When Women Lost the Vote" from the Museum of the American Revolution
• Field Trip, anyone? "Founding Mothers: Women in the American Revolution" - a free lecture at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk July 18, 2026
• I recommend a field trip to Boston - to Commonwealth Ave Mall (the park up the middle of the road) for The Boston Women's Memorial, which has statues of two Revolutionary era women from the book. 
• You can find out more about all of the women in Roberts' book online. But as a former professional historian, I have a soft spot for historians like Mercy Otis Warren, so I'll add this link for more on her from the Mount Vernon website., which has lots of profiles relevant to this book.

Keep reading:

• HTL's US@250 booklist of titles related to the American Revolution.
• I can personally recommend NH author Alex Myers' fictional story of Patriot soldier Deborah Sampson - Revolutionary (2014). We don't have it, but I can request it through interlibrary loan.
• Some of Cokie Roberts' other books : Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868; Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation; and We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters
• Learn about more founding mothers, noted on panels in our National Parks.

2026 April - Prodigal Summer

 

"She loved the air after a hard rain, and the way a forest of dripping leaves fills itself with a sibilant percussion that empties your head of words."

Prodigal Summer

Barbara Kingsolver (2000)

Wednesday, April 15, 1pm

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by  a young hunter. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa, a bookish city girl turned farmer’s wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about the complexities of a world neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.

**See content warnings at bottom of this post. 

 Resources (so many great links and pages on these two sites):

• Author's website

  In particular, I suggest you read BK's autobiography page  and she links to this Prodigal-specific interview with Science Friday

• A resource page from a NY library

   

  We have a program coming to the library that is related to this book's themes/plot. 

  Becoming Wolf: The Eastern Coyote in New England, with wild canid ecologist, (and local) Chris Schadler. Saturday, April 11, 11am

  
  
  Read more:
• Read your way through Appalachia
• We have a lot of BK's books in our collection, including her fiction, essays, nonfiction, and poetry.

 

 

**Content warnings: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty and death, Bullying, Cancer, Cursing, Death of Spouse, Grief, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexual Content, Transphobia

2026 March - Hell of a Book

 

At some point, a person has to be seen.

Hell of a Book

Jason Mott (2021)

Wednesday, March 18, 1pm

In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That story is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. 

As the characters’ stories build and build, they converge, and they astonish. This heartbreaking and magical book is about family, love of parents and children, art, and money. It is also, throughout, a tragic story of a police shooting that plays over and over on the news, and a reckoning of what it can mean to be Black in America.

An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.
 

**See content warnings at bottom of this post. 

 Resources:

• Author's homepage
• Author's older page for his poetry 
• Discussion questions (from the publisher)
• Interview with the author (after is more recent novel) from the Decatur Book Festival, I recommend starting at 30 minutes into the interview, and then do the first 30 if you have more time.
• An NPR interview with Mott

**Content warnings: death, violence, racism, mental illness and depression, police brutality, alcoholism,  racism, gun violence, child death, parent death, bullying

Feb 2026 Homeseeking

 

Homeseeking

Karissa Chen (2025)

Wednesday, February 18, 1pm

Haiwen is buying bananas at a supermarket in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

**Click here to see content warnings. 

 Resources:

• Author's homepage (including a PDF download reader's guide with discussion questions)
• Another reader's guide/discussion questions 

To augment your reading:

• Chen created a playlist for Haiwen and Suchi on YouTube.  
• Photographs from 1947-49 Shanghai by Life Magazine photographer, Jack Birns 

Jan 2026 - Wuthering Heights

“It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.” —Virginia Woolf

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë (1847)

Wednesday, January 21, 1pm

When Heathcliff, a poor young boy, is adopted into wealthy Catherine Earnshaw’s family, he and Catherine form a bond that progresses from childhood friendship to teenage passion. Because of Heathcliff’s lowly social status, however, Catherine decides she cannot marry him. This sets in motion a chain of events of jealousy, revenge, and bitterness.

**Click here to see content warnings. 

 

E-book and Audiobook links:

E-book at Project Gutenberg. 

Lots of options for hearing the audiobook via YouTube or Librivox.

 

Resources:

• I highly recommend reading these two pieces by Emily's sister, Charlotte, "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" and "Editor's Preface to the New Edition"
• Comprehensive Reader's Guide to the book.
• Another reading guide, with character map and list.  
• Brontë Society's Bronte Parsonage Museum (where Emily grew up) 
• Discussion questions 

Commentary on the book: 

• Close Reads Podcast did WH last year. Here is episode one (listen after you've read Chapters 1-6)

Dec 2025 - The Road to Tender Hearts

A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death.

The Road to Tender Hearts

by Annie Hartnett (2025)

Wednesday, December 17, 1pm

**See content warnings at end of post.

A beautiful reminder that the world is full of tragedy, but life-changing joy and connection might be just around the corner.   -Kirkus starred review

Resources:

• Summary blurb from the publisher. 
• Author's homepage.
• Interview with Hartnett on Marginalia, NPR(35 min)
• Interview on The Roundtable, NPR (11 min)  

Hartnett wrote two previous novels: 

• Unlikely Animals 2022 (FIC HAR) - Emma Starling, a natural-born healer who lost her way, and her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain injury, team up to find Emma's former best friend from high school who has gone missing, setting in motion a miracle the town needs.
• Rabbit Cake 2017 (Libby audio or ILL) - A debut novel follows the darkly comic experiences of a precocious 12-year-old girl named Elvis who worries about her troubled family and tries to figure out her place in the world in the aftermath of her mother's accidental death. 

Read-a-likes in our collection (most of the parenthetical notes come from BooklistPlus, a website to which your library card gives you access):

• Espach's The Wedding People (oddly funny and heartwarming novels with tough subject matters) FIC ESP
• Halpern's A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher (animals in nursing homes; this one is nonfiction) 636.708 HAL
• Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (novels with MC who spontaneously embarks on a cross-country trip to reunite with an old friend) FIC JOY
• McKenzie's The Dog of the North (endearingly odd protagonists, offbeat novels, unforgettable road trips inspire moving discoveries about family) LP MCK
• Rowley's The Guncle (single men unexpectedly take on care of young siblings in funny, bittersweet novels) FIC ROW
• Wilson's Run for the Hills (cross-country road trip is the catalyst for reconnection among family members in endearing, character-driven novels) NEW FIC WIL

 

 

 

Content Warnings 

alcoholism, heart condition, domestic abuse, poisoning, murder-suicide, suicide, murder, death, estranged parents, cancer, paternity test, abandonment, drowning, loneliness, untreated mental illness  

Nov 2025 - There Are Rivers in the Sky

 

There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024)
by Elif Shafak

Water remembers. It is humans who forget.

Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Discussion at 1pm

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water. 

In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. Arthur’s only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl, and her grandmother are living by the River Tigris when they must to journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people. In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, foresees a life drained of all love and meaning – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything. (From the publisher.) 

*Note the content warnings at bottom of this post.

Copies available to borrow are at the library. If you wish to own a copy, Gibson's in Concord and MainStreet BookEnds in Warner will graciously offer a discount for our book group. 

Oct 2025 (with/at the Hopkinton Historical Society) - The Serviceberry

The Hopkinton Historical Society and the Hopkinton Town Library invite you to a special, town-wide discussion of the book,  

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (2024)

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Thursday, Oct. 16, at 7pm, at the Hopkinton Historical Society on Main Street.

for more details on the event, see the Hopkinton Historical Society's website.

A bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

Resources for the book:

• More details about the book at the publisher's website. 
• The author's homepage. 
• "Robin Wall Kimmerer on What Nature Teaches Us About Giving Back" Museum of Science interview
• A conversation with Kimmerer on Emergence Magazine's podcast. Emergence is the magazine that published the original article "The Serviceberry" on their site as well, which was expanded for the book. 
• To find out more about Serviceberry / Shadbush, see the Maine Forest Service's illustrated guide to Forest Trees of Maine. On that page, click "search for individual species" and type "serviceberry" for a PDF.
• Discussion questions (not necessarily the ones we will discuss on Oct 16)
• NPS's website on Indigenous Knowledge or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (site appears to be unchanged since this 2024 archive of it) 
• An article about Kimmerer's talk at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center last winter. 
• NPS's site on Anishinaabe culture and language. 
• Learn more about Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrum (page 60)  
  
  

Mentioned at the Historical Society discussion 

• Kimmerer's profile and portrait on the Americans Who Tell the Truth Website 
• Examples of gift economy mindset in Hopkinton: 
• Slusser Center (winter coat drive, lunches, and more), Witching Hour's Halloween costume drive, the trade table and trailer at the dump, the Sean Powers Wood Bank, Work Song Farm's compost collection, the library, Shared Harvest, Susan's Hopkinton News newsletter, and more

Keep reading:

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard  
• World of ­Won­der­s: In Praise of ­Fire­flies, Whale Shark­s, and Other As­ton­ish­ments, by Aimee Nezhuku­matathil 
• Abundance, by Ezra Klein 
• Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein (cited in The Serviceberry, p93) 

Oct 2025 - The Ten Thousand Doors of January

 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January (2019)

by Alix E. Harrow

“With the finding of a door comes change." (101)

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Discussion at 1pm

From the publisher:  In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery with the help of a mysterious book, good friends, and a bad dog.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Copies available to borrow are at the library. If you wish to own a copy, Gibson's in Concord and MainStreet BookEnds in Warner will graciously offer a discount for our book group. 

    Resources for the book: 

• Author's website.
• Discussion questions
• About the god Janus (for whom January in the book, and January the month, are named) 
• Alix E. Harrow's other books. 
• more to come
•  

Read-A-Likes (these are mostly "portal fiction")

• The Lost Story, by Meg Shaffer 
• The Narnia Series, by C. S. Lewis
• The Awakening, by Nora Roberts 
• Fairy Tale, by Stephen King 
• Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke 

Sept 2025 - The Anthropocene Reviewed

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (2021)

by John Green

“Here's the plain truth, at least as it has been shown to me: We are never far from wonders." (33)

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Discussion at 1pm

From the publisher: The Anthropocene is the current geologic age, in which humans have profoundly reshaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays, bestselling author John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale—from the QWERTY keyboard and sunsets to Canada geese and Penguins of Madagascar. Funny, complex, and rich with detail, the reviews chart the contradictions of contemporary humanity. 

Copies available to borrow are at the library. If you wish to own a copy, Gibson's in Concord and MainStreet BookEnds in Warner will graciously offer a discount for our book group. Audio and e-book versions are on Libby.

There are 49 essays including the introduction. Let's all read the following parts for common ground. Then. read as many of the others as you'd like. 

• Introduction
• Humanity's Temporal Range
• Lascaux Cave Paintings 
• Sunsets
• Penguins of Madagascar
• Hiroyuki Doi's Circle Drawings  
• The World's Largest Ball of Paint
• (also, the Notes section at the end) 

Resources:

• Author bio on his website. 
• Three videos on John Green's page for this book.
• This is the podcast that preceded the book.
• Note that there are extra chapters in the paperback and more in the audiobook. There are also podcasts that did not make it into any of the books.  
• Misc. links specific to various chapters (in order)
• History of Halley's Comet from NASA.
• John Green's original podcast of Humanity's Temporal Range, written/recorded just before the COVID19 pandemic hit US, but aired for the first time right after the shutdown began, and with a March 2020 cold open.
• All of Liverpool's stadium sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" (in Aug 2025)
• Lascaux Cave Paintings official site
• Scratch n Sniff visual sampler 
• The World's Largest Ball of Paint  
• Related to Velociraptors: The Brontosaurus Is Back 
• Hiroyuki Doi's Circle Drawings: The exhibit Green saw at the Folk Art Museum was called "Obsessive Drawing"
• The Hot Dogs of Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur: here's a guide to Icelandic hot dogs
• The Kauaʻi ʻōʻō - this essay is not included in the printed books, but is part of the audiobook. You can hear the podcast version here (starts at 12min 30sec).

John Green's other stuff: 

• His other books, including his latest nonfiction Everything Is Tuberculosis and his famous YA novel, The Fault in Our Stars
• I love how John Green jumps at teaching moments, mostly because he teaches well. Really anything he has produced is worthwhile, in my opinion. He and his brother Hank have a helpful YouTube channel called Crash Course that has long been one of my go-to's for quick instruction on a myriad of things (for example, OCD and Anxiety Disorders, The Anthropocene, or The Constitution)

 Read-a-likes:

• Aimee Nezhukumatathi's Bite by Bite and World of Wonders  
• Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
• Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal 

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:

• Find some at NEA's Big Read page on the book (also has background info and spoilers)
• Reading Group Guide and Discussion Questions spoilers 

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

• So very good documentary, I highly recommend -- American Experience's Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space "an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century." I'm so happy this available to stream for free on PBS's website.
• Short biographical sketch of ZNH by one of her biographers (also in the back of the paperback editions).  
• Another short bio here (with photos and timeline).
• Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928: read about it here, or watch this short video on PBS or this video piece
• Podcast about ZNH and Their Eyes..., from Writ Large 
• Short, worthwhile commentary: "What I Learned About Love from Rereading “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by scholar Eve Dunbar
• You can watch an older PBS "American Masters" episode on Hurston online at Internet Archive.

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)

July 2025 - Gather

 

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:

• Gather was Vermont Reads' 2024 state-wide pick. They are still running programs this summer. 
• Presentation by the author at The Norwich Bookstore (spoilers)
• Vermont Public Radio article on the book  
• Cadow doesn't have any other books (yet?), but I did find a blog post he wrote about reading and writing. 

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:

• I strongly encourage you to scroll all the way through the Vermont Reads Gather page.
• Give or receive help right here in Hopkinton through the Human Services Dept.  and statewide
• Get involved with Family Promise of Greater Concord, which helps families experiencing homelessness
• Read this recent article on homeless youth in Manchester.

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." )

 

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: 

• Author's website: www.emilymandel.com
• If you need to understand the timeline a bit better (and don't mind spoilers or have finished already), wikipedia has a timeline of sorts that's hlepful. 
• Discussion questions from the publisher: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/692735/sea-of-tranquility-by-emily-st-john-mandel/9780593321447/readers-guide/ 
• Mandel discussing the book with the Barnes & Noble book club (spoilers, I'm sure)
• at 19min35sec she discusses how she "solved" the time travel problem 
  at 22m, she discusses the genre-defying nature of her books
•  

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).

 

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:

• More information on the book: www.zeynjoukhadar.com

• Interviews with the author: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7wx2TkRm4w. There are more interviews, etc. on the author's website: www.zeynjoukhadar.com.

• Learn more about the Syrian Refugee Crisis

  Learn about synesthesia from one of my favorite neuroscientists on Youtube and about what it's like to experience it from another video. These two are TED talks by synesthetes who try to demonstrate a taste of what it's like for them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvPd3wH21z8 and www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LUbxfnpez4

• To learn more about the Tabula Rogeriana -- the book al Idrisi created for Roger from 1138-1154, I suggest starting with this YouTube video. The oldest known copy of the book is preserved at the National Library of France. A copy of the al Idrisi's map of the known world (as recreated by Konrad Miller in 1928 from al-Idrisi’s original work) is at the Library of Congress. From LOC: "Written in Arabic with north oriented towards the bottom, al-Idrisi drew his map in 70 separate sections with accompanying text. When laid out, the original sheets would have created a rectangular map 9 feet and 5 inches long!"

• Learn more about al Idrisi and Roger II of Sicily, both real people
  

• Fascinating (to me, at least) is also this account of Ptolemy's Geographica (mentioned on pages 39 and 304)
  

Read more:

• Joukhadar's most recent novel: The Thirty Names of Night

• "Great Reads Related to Syria" from A World Adventure by Book

• Books by Arab American authors: lists from PopSugar, or the Seattle Public Library 

• Books by Trans authors

In the news right now:

• On April 22, NPR's Morning Edition had a piece on The White Helmets, a Syrian relief organization. You can also learn more from the award winning 2017 documentary (on Netflix) The White Helmets.

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: 

• Author Loren Grush's website
• more about the book with extras from the publisher Simon&Schuster
• Nichelle Nichols' NASA recruitment video
• Audio interview with Grush on Verge.com 
• Interview with Grush from Space.com
  

Extras to enhance your reading: 

• Grush experiencing extra gravity and zero-gravity
• Visit the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center (we have a pass to get you in -- call to reserve)
• Women in Space "Firsts" gallery at Space.com
• More on the Mercury 13: www.space.com/mercury-13.html 
  

Keep reading:

• Fiction and nonfiction about women in space: www.bustle.com/p/read-about-women-in-space-in-these-10-novels-nonfiction-books-about-the-final-frontier-18203932
• Nonfiction about these and other space pioneers (who happen to be women):
• femalereads.com/9-non-fiction-books-about-women-in-space/
• www.bustle.com/p/10-books-about-female-space-pioneers-because-women-have-always-shot-for-the-stars-44953
  

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?