Adult Book Club

NEW! Adult Book Discussion

Join us for our Monthly Adult Book Discussion beginning Wednesday, January 25, 2012!

The Book Discussion Group will meet on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the LeClaire Community Library @ 6:30 pm.

Copies of the book can be obtained at the Circulation Desk of the LeClaire Community Library to LeClaire Library patrons. Twenty copies of this selection will be available for check-out at no charge on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the initial supply of books is claimed, patrons wishing to participate are asked to obtain a copy of the book independently.
 

Reading selections for 2012 are as follows:

Classics

Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte ( November)
Review -"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 (336 p.)

EMILY BRONTE  (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.

A Passage to India- E.M. Forster (August)
Modern Library /Time- 100 Best English Novels of the 20^th Century

A Passage to India (1924) is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".^[1] The novel is based on Forster's experiences in India. (368 p.)

EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.

The Ponder Heart - Eudora Welty (April)

Uncle Daniel Ponder, whose fortune is exceeded only by his desire to give it away, is a source of vexation for his niece, Edna Earle. Uncle Daniel’s trial for the alleged murder of his seventeen-year-old bride is a comic masterpiece. Awarded the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for Fiction- 1954. (168 p.) 

EUDORA WELTY (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Mississippi State College for Women, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University (where she studied advertising). In addition to short fiction, Welty wrote novels, novellas, essays, and reviews, and was the winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Mystery

When the Killing’s Done- T.C. Boyle (June)

Starred Review (Booklist & Publisher’s Weekly). The New York Times - Barbara Kingsolver- Character, science and history co-evolve marvelously here in a tale of fanaticism gone literally overboard. Boyle's devotees will find everything they expect in the way of manic plotlines, flamboyant obsessions and cool comeuppance outlandishly delivered…This is a smart and rollicking novel, with suspense and shipwrecks galore, in which no character ever quite understands the stakes and no challenge is perfectly answered. (384 p.)

Bury Your Dead- Louise Penny (March)

Agatha & Macavity Award Winner- Best Mystery Novel (2011)

Starred Review (Booklist & Publisher’s Weekly). Penny's moving and powerful sixth Chief Insp. Armand Gamache mystery (after 2009's The Brutal Telling), Gamache is recovering from a physical and emotional trauma, the exact nature of which isn't immediately disclosed, in Québec City. When the body of Augustin Renaud, an eccentric who'd spent his life searching for the burial site of Samuel de Champlain, Québec's founder, turns up in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society, Gamache reluctantly gets involved in the murder inquiry.

Before I Go to Sleep- S.J. Watson (September)

Starred Review (Booklist & Kirkus) “This mesmerizing, skillfully written debut novel works on multiple levels. It is both an affecting portrait of the profound impact of a debilitating illness and a pulse-pounding thriller whose outcome no one could predict.” (Booklist- starred review)

“Watson’s debut novel unwinds as a story that is both complicated and compellingly hypnotic. . . . Watson’s pitch–perfect writing propels the story to a frenzied climax that will haunt readers long after they’ve closed the cover on this remarkable book.” (Kirkus Reviews- starred review)

Popular Fiction

The Dovekeepers- Alice Hoffman (May)

Hoffman births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill. (Kirkus Reviews)

Hoffman finds poetry and beauty, dignity and honor, even in those perilous, blood-soaked times. VERDICT- This powerful and gripping novel about survival and endurance will stay with you for a long time. (Library Journal)

Tiger’s Wife- Tea Obreht (January)

Orange Prize for Fiction- Winner (2011); NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST (2011)

Starred Review (Publisher’s Weekly) The sometimes crushing power of myth, story, and memory is explored in the brilliant debut of Obreht, the youngest of the New Yorker's 20-under-40. Natalia Stefanovi, a doctor living (and, in between suspensions, practicing) in an unnamed country that's a ringer for Obreht's native Croatia, crosses the border in search of answers about the death of her beloved grandfather, who raised her on tales from the village he grew up in, and where, following German bombardment in 1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo in a nearby city and befriended a mysterious deaf-mute woman. (368 p.)

Swamplandia- Karen Russell (July)

Nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2011)

Starred Review (Booklist) Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air. (416 p.)

Non-fiction

Turn Right at Machu Pichu – Mark Adams (October)

What happens when an adventure travel expert-who's never actually done anything adventurous-tries to re-create the original expedition to Machu Picchu?

July 24, 1911, was a day for the history books. For on that rainy morning, the young Yale professor Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and encountered an ancient city in the clouds: the now famous citadel of Machu Picchu. Nearly a century later, news reports have recast the hero explorer as a villain who smuggled out priceless artifacts and stole credit for finding one of the world's greatest archaeological sites.  (352 p.)

Review- "If you haven't been to Machu Picchu and environs, this book will inspire you to drop everything and go. And if you've already been, Turn Right at Machu Picchu will transport you straight back to those soul-soaring heights.”--National Geographic Traveler ("Book of the Month")

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West- Dorothy Wickenden. (February)

Publishers Weekly- On July 24, 1916, the Syracuse Daily Journal printed the headline: "Society Girls Go to Wilds of Colorado." The two young women were Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, recent graduates of Smith College who, in order to defy their family's expectation of marriage, sought work in the small town of Hayden, Colo. Woodruff was the grandmother of New Yorker executive editor Wickenden, who herself becomes a central character in an informative and engaging narrative. (304 p.)