The library book group will meet this Wednesday February 23rd at 1pm in the Local History Room at the library. If you can’t make it in person but would like to join via zoom the link is below.
Enjoy your week!
Topic: February Book Group
Time: Feb 23, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83121721518?pwd=ZFVpTmVxVkRPNlFBL3Mzb1ozZmxpZz09
Meeting ID: 831 2172 1518
Passcode: 394958
Copies of the book are available at the library. Regular print, large print, cd audiobook and Overdrive/Libby ebook and audiobook editions are available for this title.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise. ---www.penguinrandomhouse.com
We’ll be meeting to discuss American Dirt on Wednesday January 26th at 1pm here at the library (in the Local History Room). We are also offering the option of participating via zoom. The link to the zoom meeting is below. Just click on the first link in the invitation and it should get you into the zoom ‘waiting room’ and I will let you into the meeting. (The information below the first link is how to connect via telephone, so you can ignore that part unless that’s the only way you have of joining in). Let me know if you have any questions about how to join.
Topic: January Book Group
Time: Jan 26, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83730297155?pwd=bTVVMGJhOFJCK214azhZcmZ5cGp0UT09
Meeting ID: 837 3029 7155
Passcode: 024130
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Meeting ID: 837 3029 7155
Passcode: 024130
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January book discussion
American Dirt
by Jeanine Cummins
Wednesday January 26th at 1pm
Type of meeting to be determined
(in-person, zoom or a hybrid)
Copies of the book (including regular and large print editions and audiobook on CD) are available for checkout at the library.
Also available as a hoopla audiobook, Overdrive/Libby ebook and Overdrive/Libby audiobook.
Let us know if you have any questions about accessing our online versions!
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable.
Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia's husband's tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier's reach doesn't extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
American Dirt will leave readers utterly changed. It is a literary achievement filled with poignancy, drama, and humanity on every page. It is one of the most important books for our times.
Already being hailed as "a Grapes of Wrath for our times" and "a new American classic," Jeanine Cummins's American Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope. ----Publisher's website
Check out this great resource page for our upcoming discussion of Girl, Woman, Other (including a handy character list!).
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Wednesday October 27 at 1pm
Copies of the book are available at the library as well as on hoopla (audio, ebook) and Overdrive (audio, ebook).
Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize
National Bestseller
“A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood… An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves… Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.”—Booker Prize judgesBernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. 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 that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.
Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.
https://groveatlantic.com/book/girl-woman-other/
SEPTEMBER
Karen is on vacation, but would want you to know that the September book group will be reading "The Stranger in the Woods: The extraordinary story of the last true hermit" by Michael Finkel. We should be receiving the "READS to GO" bag of books via ILL on Wednesday September 1st and will make those available asap.
I'm going on vacation at the end of the month so there is no specific book for August. However....Cindy Garland has generously volunteered to lead the group in discussing (what else??) BOOKS! Have you read something great lately? Have an all-time favorite that you think would be great for a discussion? We’d like to compile everyone’s suggestions prior to the meeting date of August 25th. Please email your list of 2 or 3 books (or more if you so choose) with a descriptive line or 2 about each book to info@hopkintontownlibrary.org and we will put together a handout that everyone can take home. Or just come and listen to everyone’s suggestions on WEDNESDAY AUGUST 25th at 1pm in the Community Room.
Have a great rest of your summer! Karen
