November 2023 - The Salt Path

Edited 7-2025 to add:
This book is under scrutiny for misrepresenting facts. Please see news articles here:
 (the rest of this post is as it was Nov 2023)
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Excited, afraid, homeless, fat, dying, but at least if we made that first step we had somewhere to go, we had a purpose. And we really didn’t have anything better to do at half past three on a Thursday afternoon than to start a 630-mile walk.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

November 15, 2023 @ 1pm, at the library

“Polished, poignant… an inspiring story of true love.”—Entertainment Weekly

A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR’s Book Concierge
Shortlisted for THE COSTA BOOK AWARD

From the publisher: 

The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England

Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, through Devon and Cornwall.

Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea, and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable and life-affirming journey. Powerfully written and unflinchingly honest, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home—how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.

Copies of the book available at the library.  

Prefer to buy a copy? Gibson's and Main Street Bookends will honor a 20% discount if you purchase the book at either place and tell them it's for this group. You can also buy the streaming audiobook from Libro (choose your favorite local bookstore) or other streaming outlet.

Additional Resources (check back for more through the month):

 Read more...


 

 

 

 

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October 2023 - You Bring the Distant Near

You Bring the Distant Near  You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins book cover 

 

Five girls. Three generations. One great American love story.

You Bring the Distant Near

A novel by Mitali Perkins

October 25, 2023 1pm at the library

Copies of the book and audiobook (CDs) available at the library.  

Plan to buy a copy? Gibson's and Main St. Bookends will honor a discount if you purchase the book at either place and tell them it's for this group. You can also buy the streaming audiobook from Gibson's or Audible, etc.

From the publisher:

This elegant novel captures the immigrant experience for one Indian-American family with humor and heart. Told in alternating voices across three generations, You Bring the Distant Near explores sisterhood, first loves, friendship, and the inheritance of culture–for better or worse.

From a grandmother worried that her children are losing their Indian identity to a daughter wrapped up in a forbidden biracial love affair to a social-activist granddaughter, award-winning author Mitali Perkins weaves together the threads of a family growing into an American identity.

Additional Resources (check back for more):

Read more...










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September 2023 - West with Giraffes

  

“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…”

West with Giraffes

by Lynda Rutledge (2021)

Wednesday Sept. 27 at 1pm

Copies available at the library. 

If you prefer to buy your own copy, Main Street Bookends in Warner and Gibson's Bookstore in Concord both offer a discount for our monthly reads.

An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.
 
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.

Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.
 
Additional Resources:
The author's website has some archival photos of the giraffes here (as well as discussion ideas): https://www.lyndarutledge.com/disc.htm
A video about the giraffes and their journey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q5IAFHZ96I
 
If you are left wanting more...we have these books and media in our collection.

Related non-fiction:

 

  • 363.55 Loewen        Sun­down ­towns: a hid­den di­men­sion of racism
  • 636 Beloz­er­skaya     The Medi­ci ­gi­raffe: and other ­tales of ex­otic animals and power
  • 779.092 Heyman      Dorothea Lange: Amer­i­can pho­tographs
  • 978.032 Egan           The worst hard ­time: the un­told s­to­ry…dust bowl
  • Biography Bourke    Mar­garet Bourke-White, by Ru­bin
  • DVD 973.917           The Dust bowl (documentary)      
  • J 973.917 Sandler     Pic­tur­ing a ­na­tion: the Great De­pres­sion
  • NH 333.75 Draves    Builder of ­men: life in C.C.C. ­camp­s of NH (Local History Room)

Related Fiction:

  • Curtis           Bud, not Bud­dy (Juvenile fiction)
  • Gruen           Water ­for ele­phants (we have the audiobook, too)
  • Hannah         The four winds (we have the audiobook, too)
  • Hesse           Out of the ­dust (Juvenile fiction)
  • Ledgard        Gi­raffe
  • Loewen­stein Funer­al ­train
  • Meadows      I will send rain
  • Moyes          The giver of s­tars
  • Silver            Mary Coin
  • Steinbeck      The grapes of wrath (we also have the DVD movie)     
  • Towles          The Lin­col­n high­way
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July title

 

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

Wednesday July 26th at 1pm

Copies available at the library. Also available as a hoopla audiobook. 


First published in 1953, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family." But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is
discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

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June title

 

  Remarkably Bright Creatures

 by Shelby Van Pelt

 Wednesday June 28th at 1pm

Available editions:

Hoopla audiobook 

Hoopla ebook

Libby audiobook

Libby ebook

Print copies (available soon!)

 

 After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova. Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late.

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Zoom link for May 24th meeting

 Here is the zoom link for today's meeting at 1pm.

 

Karen Dixon is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: May book group
Time: May 24, 2023 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81946347694?pwd=NUhmaHlETThXTGk0N3IwUFgyZ3dmZz09

Meeting ID: 819 4634 7694
Passcode: 478579

 

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Grey Bees background, links and discussion questions

 

Grey Bees

 

Andrey Vuryevich Kurkov (born 23 April 1961 in Leningrad, USSR) is a Ukrainian author and public intellectual who writes in Russian. He is the author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin, nine books for children, and about 20 documentary, fiction and TV movie scripts. His work is currently translated into 37 languages. Kurkov's most recently translated novel, Grey Bees, which has "elements of both the fable and the epic", dramatizes the conflict in his country through the adventures of a beekeeper. The novel was translated into French by Paul Lequesne as Les abeilles grises, which won the 2022 Prix Medicis etranger.

Kurkov lives in Kyiv with his English wife, Elizabeth, and their three children. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he became an internally displaced person and continued to write and broadcast about the war. A bilingual, native Russian speaker, in a 2022 interview Kurkov speculated that Russia's war on Ukraine, rather than suppress Ukrainian culture and identity, would potentially have the opposite effect, encouraging Ukrainian writers, especially those whose native language is Russian, to publish increasingly, or even exclusively, in Ukrainian. (Wikipedia)

 

Useful reviews and interviews

 

Frenemies in a War Zone: On Andrey Kurkov's "Grey Bees - LA Times –

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/frenemies-in-a-war-zone-on-andrey-kurkovs-grey-bees/

  A Humorous Ukrainian Writer, With Nothing to Laugh About- NYT -

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/books/andrey-kurkov-ukraine-war.html

A Ukrainian Novel Looks Between the Lines of War - New Yorker -

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/a-ukrainian-novel-looks-between-the-lines-of-war

A Beekeeper and his bees go on a road-trip across war-torn Eastern Ukraine - 

https://electricliterature.com/grey-bees-by-andrey-kurkov-novel-ukraine/

 

Some major themes of Russian Literature:

 

1.     Westernizers vs. Slavophiles - constant awareness of Russia's relation to the cultures of the West

 

2.    The superfluous man - men whose ambition is made irrelevant by the great power of the state

3.    The "enchanted wanderer"

4.    Hagiography - Saints' lives

        5.   Skaz - telling tales in an almost folkloric voice

 

Discussion Questions for Grey Bees by Andrei Kurkov

1.    What is Sergeich's relationship to the color grey? How does it change throughout the novel?

 

2.    Why was the name of Sergeich and Vitalina's daughter such a breaking point for their relationship?

 

3.    What is the significance or the vodka/lard (pig fat, not usually rendered)/onion ceremony in the book?

 

4.    Why does Sergeich feel so empowered by changing the street signs around?

 

5.    Who is the "great man" who comes to sleep on the bee bed, and why is Sergeich so moved by his coming?

 

6.    Why do  Pahka and Sergeich remain "friends/frenemies" despite their enormous differences?

 

7.    Why are bees, in particular, at the center of the story? Are they inside culture or outside of it?

 

    8.    From the point of view of art, why does Sergeich go to Crimea instead of further west in Ukraine? What does Kurka need him to find there?

 

    9.    What is the role of the comic scenes at the border?

 

10.  Are you surprised by Sergeich's ignorance of Tatar culture?

 

        11.  How does Sergeich's time in Crimea affect him?

        12.  Do you really have to know the history of this region to understand this book?

13.  What is the relationship between the three regions where Sergeich spends time in this book - the grey zone, "free Ukraine" and Crimea?

 

14. Towards the end of the novel, Sergeich could have chosen any one of three ultimate destinations: back to his wife, back to Galya, or back to Starohorodivka. Why does he make the choice he does?

 

15. How has Sergeich changed by the end of the novel?

 

Map of grey zone in 2015


 

    


 

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