BPL Book Group
Contact Rebecca Allen at [email protected] if you would like to participate in this month's discussion. She will EMail you the ZOOM link either the day before or on the day of the meeting. Let her know if you need help acquiring the book, or if you would like to attend but January 25 is not a good evening for you.
Everyone is welcome to join!
January 2021
Meets Monday, January 25th at 7PM Wild Swans (First section) Jung Chang Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography. The book won two awards: the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year. The book has been translated into 37 languages and sold over 13 million copies. (Information from Wikipedia.) |
2020 Selections
January
Meets Monday, January 20th at 7 pm Educated Tara Westover Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it. |
February
Meets Monday, February 24th at 7 pm Long Way Down Jason Reynolds An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds’s fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. |
March
Meets Monday, March 16th at 7 pm The Rules of Civility Amor Towles On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar with her boardinghouse roommate stretching three dollars as far as it will go when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with royal blue eyes and a tempered smile, happens to sit at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from a Wall Street secretarial pool toward the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast--rarefied environs where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. Wooed in turn by a shy, principled multi-millionaire, and an irrepressible Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, befriended by a single-minded widow who is ahead of her time, and challenged by an imperious mentor, Katey experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that reside just below the surface. Even as she waits for circumstances to bring Tinker back into her life, she begins to realize how our most promising choices inevitably lay the groundwork for our regrets. |
November
Meets Monday, November 23rd at 6:45PM via ZOOM
Circe
Madeline Miller
Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and the mortals. (adapted from publisher's information).
Meets Monday, November 23rd at 6:45PM via ZOOM
Circe
Madeline Miller
Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and the mortals. (adapted from publisher's information).
December
Meets Monday, December 28th at 7PM via ZOOM
The Queen's Gambit
Walter Tevis
Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable—until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she's competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. The plot also explores issues such as addiction, feminism, and alcoholism. Author Tevis described his book as "a tribute to brainy women". (Adapted from Wikipedia)
The book has also recently been adapted for Netflix.
Meets Monday, December 28th at 7PM via ZOOM
The Queen's Gambit
Walter Tevis
Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable—until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she's competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. The plot also explores issues such as addiction, feminism, and alcoholism. Author Tevis described his book as "a tribute to brainy women". (Adapted from Wikipedia)
The book has also recently been adapted for Netflix.
Reviews are from Goodreads, unless otherwise noted.