Book Club

Book Club

Discuss books with fellow lit lovers in the community! We meet the second Thursday of every month at 1:30pm at the Argenta Library. The library can place a hold on the monthly selections for you if you wish. We also try to keep a few spare copies at the circulation desk. Check out our top-rated books!

We’re always open to new members – join at any time! Contact us if you’d like more information.

February 2021 Selection

We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

Discussion: Thursday, February 11th, 2021 at 1:30 pm (via Zoom this time)!

Born in 1941, Eileen Tumulty is raised by her Irish immigrant parents in Woodside, Queens, in an apartment where the mood swings between heartbreak and hilarity, depending on whether guests are over and how much alcohol has been consumed. Eileen can’t help but dream of a calmer life, in a better neighborhood. When Eileen meets Ed Leary, a scientist whose bearing is nothing like those of the men she grew up with, she thinks she’s found the perfect partner to deliver her to the cosmopolitan world she longs to inhabit. They marry, and Eileen quickly discovers Ed doesn’t aspire to the same, ever bigger, stakes in the American Dream. Eileen encourages her husband to want more: a better job, better friends, a better house, but as years pass it becomes clear that his growing reluctance is part of a deeper psychological shift. An inescapable darkness enters their lives, and Eileen and Ed and their son Connell try desperately to hold together a semblance of the reality they have known, and to preserve, against long odds, an idea they have cherished of the future.

March 2021 Selection

Burial Rites

by Hannah Kent

Discussion: Thursday, March 11th, 2021 at 1:30 pm (hopefully in person)!

Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution. Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes’s death looms, the farmer’s wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they’ve heard.

April 2021 Selection

If the Creek Don’t Rise

by Leah Weiss

Discussion: Thursday, April 8th, 2021 at 1:30 pm (hopefully in person)!

In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She’s been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. When a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy’s wife.

Past discussion selections:

January 2021: Pompeii by Robert Harris — Our Rating: 4.27
December 2020: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson — Our Rating: 2.5
November 2020: The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict — Our Rating: 4.04
October 2020: The Island by Victoria Hislop — Our Rating: 4.05
September 2020: All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood — Our Rating: 4.0
July/August 2020: TheDevil’s Half Mile by Paddy Hirsch — Our Rating: 3.71
June 2020: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway — Our Rating: 4.36
March 2020: Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz — Our Rating: 2.8
February 2020: Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard — Our Rating: 3.8
January 2020: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman  — Our Rating: 3.97
December 2019: Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb  — Our Rating: 3.95
November 2019: Cemetery Road by Greg Iles — Our Rating: 4.3
October 2019: The Silent Wife by Kerry Fisher — Our Rating: 3.1
September 2019: Less by Andrew Sean Greer — Our Rating: 1.79
August 2019: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See — Our Rating: 4.36
July 2019: Traveling Light by Lynne Branard — Our Rating: 3.1
June 2019: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty — Our Rating: 2.0
May 2019: The Mirror by Marlys Millhiser — Our Rating: 3.95
April 2019: Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald — Our Rating: 1.87
March 2019: The Hideaway by Lauren K. Denton — Our Rating: 3.85
February 2019: Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan — Our Rating: 3.75
January 2019: The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman — Our Rating: 3.7

 

Click Here to see 2013-2018 Discussion Selections

Interested in participating? Let us know!
We’ll keep you informed of future discussions and even place a hold on the book for you.
Each month the Book Discussion Group rates the book that we have read on a scale from 1-5.

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