Lunch & a Book
Lunch and a Book 2013 Reading List
The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón — January 10th
Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family's feuds by Lyndall Gordon — February 14th
I married you for happiness by Lily Tuck — March 14th
Behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo — April 11th
The tiger's wife: a novel by Téa Obreht — May 9th
11/22/63: a novel by Stephen King — June 13
New Book Club in a Bag Kit
The Paris wife [kit]: a novel by Paula McLain — Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness-until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in the fabled Lost Generation. Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging
Lunch and a Book 2014 Reading List
September, October and November titles coming soon!
Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking by Susan Cain — January 9th
Defending Jacob: a novel by William Landay — February 13th
Everyone's Reading title TBA--March 13th
The dog stars by Peter Heller — April 10th
The round house by Louise Erdrich — May 8th
The housekeeper and the professor by Yoko Ogawa ; translated by Stephen Snyder — June 12th
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore by Robin Sloan — July 10th
Lunch & a Book November 2013
On Thursday November 14 at noon, we will be discussing:
The Paris wife: a novel by Paula McLain — Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness-until she meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in the fabled Lost Generation. Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging.
Lunch & a Book October 2013
On Thursday October 10 at noon, we will be discussing the Everyone's Reading 2013 selection:
The secrets of happy families: improve your mornings, rethink family dinner, fight smarter, go out and play, and much more by Bruce Feiler — Squeezed between caring for aging parents and raising his children, bestselling author and New York Times family columnist Bruce Feiler set out on a three-year journey to find the smartest solutions and the most cutting-edge research about families. Instead of the usual family "experts," he sought out the most creative minds--from Silicon Valley to the Green Berets--and asked them what team-building exercises and problem-solving techniques they use with their families. A timely, counterintuitive book that answers the questions countless parents are asking: How do we manage the chaos of our lives? How do we teach our kids values? How do we make our family happier?
Lunch & a Book September 2013
Say nice things about Detroit by Scott Lasser — The author will be joining us via Skype as we discuss this compelling urban portrait and touching love story. In a racially polarized, economically collapsing city a man struggles with the double shooting death of a high school classmate and her brother while still mourning the death of his own teenage son and coping with his mother's dementia. A starred review Booklist suggests: "Forget the grime and crime, political corruption and economic decay. Lasser's Detroit may be a troubled city, but it is one whose vibrant soul is writ large in the small actions of its loyal citizens. With a serene and steady hand, Lasser's spare but intense tale is a smart, intimate homage to the power of second chances."
Celebrate Your Book Group
October is National Book Group Month. In celebration, enter your group in a drawing for 10 copies of the Everyone's Reading book, The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce S. Feiler. Drop off a photo of your book group at the Library Help Desk, or send a .jpg attachment to brandowk@cantonpl.org or use the form below. Please identify members of your group (first names are okay) from left to right.
Photos become the property of Canton Public Library and may be displayed in the library, on the library's webpage and social media.
Entry Deadline: September 20, 2013.
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Lunch & a Book August 2013
On Thursday, August 8 at noon, we will be discussing:
Lots of candles, plenty of cake by Anna Quindlen — From childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, Quindlen uses the events of her own life to illuminate our own in this humorous memoir. Along with the downsides of age, she says, can come wisdom, a perspective on life that makes it satisfying and even joyful. Candid, funny, moving, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is filled with the sharp insights and revealing observations that have long confirmed Quindlen's status as America's laureate of real life.
Lunch & a Book July 2013
On Thursday, July 11 at noon, we will be discussing:
The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger — This classic coming of age story electrified the literary world when published in 1951. The New York Times wrote that the 'book's very first sentence, struck a brash new note in American literature': "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." Over sixty years later, Salinger's writing and his disaffected and cynical narrator, Holden Caulfield, not only have iconic stature in the literary world, but remain as fresh and exciting as they were when new.
Lunch & a Book June 2013
On Thursday, June 13 at noon, we will be discussing:
11/22/63: a novel by Stephen King — Jake Epping's friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession: to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine, to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
Lunch & a Book May 2013
The tiger's wife: a novel by Téa Obreht — Natalia, a young doctor, arrives in a Balkan country on a mission of mercy. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. But Natalia is also confronting a private mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel. Searching for clues, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. "These stories," Natalia comes to understand, "run like secret rivers through all the other stories" of her grandfather's life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.
Lunch & a Book April 2013
On Thursday, April 11 at noon we will be discussing:
Behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo — In this brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human. Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.
Lunch & a Book March 2013
I married you for happiness by Lily Tuck — Slender, potent, and engaging, the book unfolds over a single night as Nina sits at the bedside of her husband, Philip, whose sudden death is the reason for her lonely vigil. She remembers defining moments of their long union, beginning with their meeting in Paris. She is an artist, he a mathematician-a collision of two different worlds that merged to form an intricate and passionate love. As we move through select memories-real and imagined-Tuck reveals the intimacies, secrets, and joys that defined Nina and Philip's life together.
Lunch & a Book February 2013
On Thursday, February 14 at Noon we will be discussing:
Lives like loaded guns: Emily Dickinson and her family's feuds by Lyndall Gordon — In 1882, Emily Dickinson's brother Austin began a passionate love affair with Mabel Todd, a young Amherst faculty wife, setting in motion a series of events that would forever change the lives of the Dickinson family. The feud that erupted as a result has continued for over a century. Lyndall Gordon, tells the riveting story of the Dickinsons, and reveals Emily as a very different woman from the pale, lovelorn recluse that exists in the popular imagination. Gordon digs deep into the life and work of Emily Dickinson, to reveal the secret behind the poet's insistent seclusion, and presents a woman beyond her time who found love, spiritual sustenance, and immortality all on her own terms. An enthralling story of creative genius, filled with illicit passion and betrayal.
Lunch & a Book January 2013
On Thursday, January 10 at Noon we will be discussing:
The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón — Barcelona, 1945 — just after the war, Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console him, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work.
Lunch & a Book November 2012
On Thursday, November 8 at noon we'll be discussing:
The language of flowers: a novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh — After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, Victoria Jones is unable to get close to anybody and her only connection to the world is through flowers. She uses the Victorian language of flowers (originally developed to convey romance) to communicate grief, mistrust, and solitude. Praised by Booklist as "enchanting, ennobling, and powerfully engaging", this debut novel creates a vivid portrait of a woman whose gift for flowers helps her change the lives of others even as she struggles to overcome her own troubled past.
Lunch & a Book October 2012
On Thursday, October 11 at noon we'll be discussing:
Turn of mind by Alice LaPlante — Dr. Jennifer White is the prime suspect in the murder of her life-long friend and neighbor, Amanda, but as she descends further into the later stages of dementia, it becomes unclear if her shattered memory is preventing her from remembering the truth or helping her hide it. Kirkus Reviews calls this book, "a haunting story masterfully told."
Lunch & a Book September 2012
On Thursday, September 13 at Noon we'll be discussing:
Once upon a river: a novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell — After the violent death of her father, in which she is complicit, Margo Crane takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices. The New York Times called this book "an excellent American parable about the consequences of our favorite ideal, freedom."
Lunch & a Book July 2012
On Thursday, July 12 at Noon we'll be discussing:
Beloved: a novel by Toni Morrison — According to the publisher, Random House, the book can be described as "Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history in a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Lunch & a Book August 2012
On Thursday August 9 at noon we'll be discussing:
Waterland by Graham Swift — Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, England and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving… Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity… A fine and original work."