Silver&Gold Book Club

The Silver&Gold Book Club

Discuss books with fellow lit lovers in the community! We meet on the second Thursday of every month at 1:30 pm 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 each circulation desk.

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We’re always open to new members – join at any time! If you can’t make it in person to the book club discussion, click here to rate this month’s book!

 

April 2024 Selection

Discussion April 11, 2024, at 1:30 pm in Argenta
Run Rose Run
by Dolly Parton & James Patterson

From America’s most beloved superstar and #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson comes a thriller about a young singer-songwriter on the rise—and on the run—and determined to do whatever it takes to survive.

Every song tells a story.

She’s a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her.

She’s also on the run. Find a future, lose a past.

Nashville is where she’s come to claim her destiny.  It’s also where the darkness she’s fled might find her.  And destroy her.

Run, Rose, Run is a novel glittering with danger and desire—a story that only America’s #1 beloved entertainer and its #1 bestselling author could have created..

 

May 2024 Selection

Discussion May 9, 2024, at 1:30 pm in Argenta
Cell
by Robin Cook

A doctor’s life gets turned upside by a dangerous new technology in this thought-provoking medical thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robin Cook.

George Wilson, M.D., a radiology resident in Los Angeles, is about to enter a profession on the brink of an enormous paradigm shift, foreshadowing a vastly different role for doctors everywhere. The smartphone is poised to take on a new role in medicine, no longer as a mere medical app but rather as a fully customizable personal physician capable of diagnosing and treating even better than the real thing. It is called iDoc.

George’s initial collision with this incredible innovation is devastating. He awakens one morning to find his fiancée dead in bed alongside him, not long after she participated in an iDoc beta test. Then several of his patients die after undergoing imaging procedures. All of them had been part of the same beta test.

Is it possible that iDoc is being subverted by hackers—and that the U.S. government is involved in a cover-up? Despite threats to both his career and his freedom, George relentlessly seeks the truth, knowing that if he’s right, the consequences could be lethal.

 

June 2024 Selection

Discussion June 13, 2024, at 1:30 pm in Argenta
Prodigal Summer
by Barbara Kingsolver

Following the phenomenal achievement of The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver has earned a reputation as a storyteller of deep compassion, wry humor, and moral conviction. Now her fifth novel, Prodigal Summer, reveals her to be in full possession of her gifts as she spins three poignant stories against the hardscrabble landscape of southern Appalachia, where creepers and Japanese beetles have exacted a toll on small farmers. Over the course of a long, hot summer, Kingsolver’s big-hearted characters begin to grudgingly reconcile themselves with nature and find they can love one another, too.

At the center of this sprawling tale is a pack of coyotes that has wandered into the territory that park ranger Deanne Wolfe patrols in the aftermath of her divorce. For two years Wolfe has subsisted alone, her solitude proof that she didn’t need marriage in the first place. The coyotes are her only companions until Eddie Bondo shows up, with a 30-30 rifle slung over his muscled shoulder, wearing a winning smirk. Within a few hours of meeting they are tearing off each other’s clothes as they writhe across the plank floors of Wolfe’s log cabin. She eventually discovers that Eddie is more than just a freelance hunter and lothario: He’s on a bounty mission to catch and kill her precious coyotes.

Lusa Maluf Landowski faces a more wrenching choice between tending to her land and protecting her heart. A young widow burdened with a heavily mortgaged farm and ornery in-laws, she realizes it might be easier to mend her wounds if she moves on. And staying put would be a huge endeavor: Her barn needs a new roof, her tobacco plants aren’t turning a profit, and she desperately craves companionship to fill the lonely hours at home. A few miles down the road, two elderly neighbors, Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley — one a devotee of pesticides, the other an organic farmer — lock horns over whether God intended humankind to meddle with the environment. He rips down her “No Spray Zone” sign, while she accuses him of hubris. Despite their intransigent positions, they feed off each other’s ardor and draw inevitably closer together.

Erotic and poetic, Prodigal Summer is Kingsolver’s most profoundly philosophical work. With prose that is as supple as a bobcat’s tread, she paces deftly between each character’s tale, as they search for deeper meaning in the natural world around them. Wolfe knows that by sheltering predators she’s removed humankind from nature’s equation and attempted to make a false Eden of the woods. Bondo, however, forces her to accept that she needs the companionship of her own species. Lusa and Garnett realize that to live off their land they need to cede it a certain respect. And by so doing, they awaken to a richer connection with the earth and a renewed belief in the essential importance of love.

With a master’s assured cadence, Kingsolver winds between these narratives, sprinkling them with telling details about Kentucky’s flora and fauna. Moths, goats, and even snapping turtles are captured in their lush splendor. Kingsolver cleverly uses their behavioral patterns as a counterpoint to the petty wrangling of her human characters. Ultimately, though, she affirms that humans are only one link in the chain of life. Prodigal Summer offers a pointedly eloquent argument for the necessity to live within nature’s strictures. In this regard, Kingsolver proves an adept moralist, one determined to raise our awareness of the prodigal ways we squander our greatest inheritance: the world in which we live.

 

 

Past discussion selections:

December 2024: 
November 2024:
October 2024: 
September 2024: 
August 2024:
July 2024: 
June 2024: 
May 2024: 
April 2024: 
March 2024: 
The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen KentOur Rating: 4.03
February 2024:  America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie–Our Rating: 4.34
January 2024:  The Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller Santo–Our Rating:  3.37

Click Here to see our 2013-2023 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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