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Book Discussion Groups
April - June 2008
Best-sellers, classics, comedies, histories, memoirs, mysteries, romances and thrillers – whatever your favorite genre, library book discussion groups are a fun and thought-provoking way to share reading. Our regular book groups last one hour and are designed to let you participate at the level you wish. Ask questions, share your opinions or just listen to the conversation. Groups are hosted in all Chesterfield County public libraries and at a variety of times. One of the groups is sure to fit your schedule. Book discussion groups are a great way to turn reading into a social activity. Please join us in exploring a wide range of authors and styles.
Annotations are from “Books in Print.”
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Click on a month to see the schedule:
April |
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Dean, Debra | FIC DEA |
| The Madonnas of Leningrad |
| Seamlessly moving back and forth in time between the Soviet Union and contemporary America, “The Madonnas of Leningrad” is a searing portrait of war and remembrance, of the power of love, memory, and art to offer beauty, grace, and hope in the face of overwhelming despair. Gripping, touching, and heartbreaking, it marks the debut of Debra Dean, a bold new voice in American fiction. |
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Wednesday April 2 10:30 a.m. Chester Choices |
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| Hicks, Robert | FIC HIC |
| The Widow of the South |
| This debut novel is based on the true story of Carrie McGavock. During the Civil War’s Battle of Franklin, a five-hour bloodbath with 9,200 casualties, McGavock’s home was turned into a field hospital where four generals died. For 40 years she tended the private cemetery on her property where more than 1,000 were laid to rest. |
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Monday April 7 7 p.m. Meadowdale |
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| Jones, Tayari | FIC JON |
| The Untelling |
| After dealing with the loss of her father and sister 15 years ago, 25-year-old Aria attempts to reinvent herself through marriage and beginning a family of her own, only to find that she must deal with the past before she can look to the future. |
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Wednesday April 9 2 p.m. Ettrick-Matoaca |
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| Fuller, Alexandra | 968.9104 F |
| Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood |
| In “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with visceral authenticity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. |
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Thursday April 10 10:30 a.m. LaPrade Books and Bites |
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| Smith, Lee | FIC SMI |
| On Agate Hill |
| Spanning half a century, “On Agate Hill” tells the story of a woman who risks everything to remain true to herself. It’s a novel of obsessive love, unexpected adventures, and luck – both good and bad. Like a ballad of the Old South, Molly Petree’s tale resonates with passion, humor, and drama. Lee Smith, a virtuoso of voice and vision, creates flesh-and-blood characters tempered with equal doses of comedy and tragedy. Like her popular and beloved novels “Oral History” and “Fair and Tender Ladies,” “On Agate Hill” is storytelling at its very best. |
| Tuesday April 15 7 p.m. Bon Air Book Talks |
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| Steinbeck, John | FIC STE |
| Of Mice and Men |
| An intimate portrait of two men who cherish the slim bond between them and the dream they share in a world marred by petty tyranny, misunderstanding, jealousy and callousness. Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own – a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” begin to go awry. |
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Wednesday April 16 10:30 a.m. Midlothian Classics and Award Winners |
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| Delinsky, Barbara | FIC DEL |
| Lake News |
| After she is wrongly accused by a devious reporter of having had an affair with a newly appointed cardinal, Lily Blake retreats to her home town in New Hampshire. Driven by the need to exact justice and clear her name, she forms an uneasy alliance with the editor of the local paper – a man with his own grudge against the mainstream media. |
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Monday April 21 7 p.m. Enon |
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| Griffin, Emily | FIC GRI |
| Something Borrowed |
| As the September wedding date nears, Rachel knows she has to make a choice. In doing so, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren’t always neat, and sometimes you have to risk all to win true happiness. “Something Borrowed” is a phenomenal debut novel that will have you laughing, crying, and calling your best friend. (Bring a photo of your wedding or a friend or family member’s wedding.) |
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Monday April 21 7 p.m. LaPrade Chick Lit |
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| McCracken, Elizabeth | FIC MCC |
| Niagara Falls All Over Again |
| By turns graceful and knowing, funny and moving, “Niagara Falls All Over Again” is the latest masterwork by National Book Award finalist and author of “The Giant’s House,” Elizabeth McCracken. Spanning the waning years of vaudeville and the golden age of Hollywood, “Niagara Falls All Over Again” chronicles a flawed, passionate friendship over thirty years, weaving a powerful story of family and love, grief and loss. |
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Wednesday April 23 7:30 p.m. Midlothian |
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| Atkinson, Kate | FIC ATK |
| Behind the Scenes at the Museum |
| Moving with stark contrast between the Coronation year celebrations and life in the trenches during the First World War, this debut novel tells the story of a family observed by one of its members. |
| Thursday April 24 11 a.m. Clover Hill |
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| Smith, Lee | FIC SMI |
| On Agate Hill |
| Spanning half a century, “On Agate Hill” tells the story of a woman who risks everything to remain true to herself. It’s a novel of obsessive love, unexpected adventures, and luck – both good and bad. Like a ballad of the Old South, Molly Petree’s tale resonates with passion, humor and drama. Lee Smith, a virtuoso of voice and vision, creates flesh-and-blood characters tempered with equal doses of comedy and tragedy. Like her popular and beloved novels “Oral History” and “Fair and Tender Ladies,” “On Agate Hill” is storytelling at its very best. |
| Monday April 28 1 p.m. Central Brown Bag Page Turners |
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| Albom, Mitch | FIC ALB |
| For One More Day |
| Mitch Albom mesmerized readers around the world with his New York Times best-sellers, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” and “Tuesdays with Morrie.” Now he returns with a beautiful, haunting novel about the family we love and the chances we miss. “For One More Day” is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one? |
| Monday May 5 7 p.m. Meadowdale |
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| Messud, Claire | FIC MES |
| The Emperor’s Children |
| This critically acclaimed comedy of manners sets three young college graduates adrift in the intellectual elite of NYC. Not finding the world quite what they expected upon graduation from Brown University, the three struggle to find traction in their lives. Messud’s witty and cutting look at post-911 Manhattan will delight readers looking for character-centered novels with elegant plotting and cultural observations. |
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Wednesday May 7 10:30 a.m. Chester Choices |
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| Nemirovsky, Irene | FIC NEM |
| Suite Française |
| “Suite Française” is both a piercing record of its time, and a humane, profoundly moving work of art. Riveting, impossible to put down, it makes us witnesses to life as it was in wartime France, and leaves us wondering how we too might behave in such a perilous situation. An immediate best-seller in France, “Suite Française” has captured readers’ imaginations not only for the tragic story of its author, and the circumstances of its rediscovery, but for its brilliantly subtle and compelling portrait of France under occupation. |
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Thursday May 8 10:30 a.m. LaPrade Books and Bites |
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| Smith, Scott | FIC SMI |
| The Ruins |
| “The Ruins” follows two American couples, just out of college, enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico as, on an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of one of their group – the young German, who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig. This is what happens from the moment the searchers – moving into the wild interior – begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific “other” among them . . . |
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Wednesday May 14 2 p.m. Ettrick-Matoaca |
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| Smith, Zadie | FIC SMI |
| On Beauty |
| “On Beauty” is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture war, on both sides of the Atlantic, serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith’s reputation as a major literary talent. |
| Monday May 19 1 p.m. Central Brown Bag Page Turners |
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| Edgerton, Clyde | FIC EDG |
| Walking Across Egypt |
| Mattie Rigsbee is seventy-eight. She lives by herself in Listre, North Carolina (near Bethel). She claims she’s “slowing down,” but she still cuts her own grass and runs the Lottie Moon missions fund drive at Listre Baptist Church. This is the scene into which Edgerton drops Wesley Benfield – adolescent, illegitimate and delinquent, with a mouth full of foul language and bad teeth and a craving for good food. |
| Monday May 19 7 p.m. Enon |
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| Wells, Rebecca | FIC WEL |
| Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood |
| When theatre director Siddalee Walker inadvertently reveals some of the less-savory facts of her Louisiana childhood to the New York Times, the article brands her mother, Vivi, a “tap-dancing child abuser.” Vivi virtually disowns Sidda, but Vivi’s intrepid gang of lifelong friends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together. The Ya-Yas persuade Vivi to send Sidda a scrapbook of their girlhood mementos – entitled “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” |
| Monday May 19 7 p.m. LaPrade Chick Lit |
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| Wright, Richard | B W9515 |
| Black Boy |
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Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi, with poverty, hunger, fear and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those about him; at six he was “a drunkard,” hanging about taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot. At the end of “Black Boy,” Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” Wright’s eloquent account is at once a profound indictment and an unashamed confession – a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering. |
| Tuesday May 20 7 p.m. Bon Air Book Talks |
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| Lee, Harper | FIC LEE |
| To Kill a Mockingbird |
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A gripping, heart-wrenching and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice,
“To Kill a Mockingbird” views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father – a crusading local lawyer – risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime. |
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Wednesday May 21 10:30 a.m. Midlothian Classics and Award Winners |
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| Smith, Scott | FIC SMI |
| The Ruins |
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“The Ruins” follows two American couples, just out of college, enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico as, on an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of one of their group – the young German, who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig. This is what happens from the moment the searchers – moving into the wild interior – begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific “other” among them . . . |
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Thursday May 22 11 a.m. Clover Hill |
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| Tartt, Donna | FIC TAR |
| The Secret History |
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Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill. |
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Wednesday May 28 7:30 p.m. Midlothian |
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June |
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Hoffman, Alice | FIC HOF |
| Practical Magic |
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For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, but all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back – almost as if by magic... |
| Monday June 2 7 p.m. Meadowdale |
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| Barrett, Andrea | FIC BAR |
| The Voyage of the Narwhal |
| Delving into the history of Arctic exploration, this book follows the crew and commander of a ship searching for the open polar sea, as seen through the eyes of a scholar-naturalist. |
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Wednesday June 4 10:30 a.m. Chester Choices |
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| Smith, Zadie | FIC SMI |
| On Beauty |
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“On Beauty” is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture war, on both sides of the Atlantic, serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith’s reputation as a major literary talent. |
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Wednesday June 11 2 p.m. Ettrick-Matoaca |
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| Barrett, Andrea | FIC BAR |
| Voyage of the Narwhal |
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Delving into the history of Arctic exploration, this book follows the crew and commander of a ship searching for the open polar sea, as seen through the eyes of a scholar-naturalist. |
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Thursday June 12 10:30 a.m. LaPrade Books and Bites |
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| Hornby, Nick | FIC HOR |
| About a Boy |
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If the fact that they were single mothers meant that gorgeous women (who would not ordinarily look twice at Will) were willing to date him, then Will had it made. Inventing a son got him into a single parents support group, but rather than a fabulous new sex life, he found someone else’s very real son – a twelve-year-old with a lot to teach Will about being a grown up. |
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Monday June 16 7 p.m. Enon |
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| Green, Jane | FIC GRE |
| Swapping Lives |
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“Swapping Lives” is a riotous and poignant look at what happens when two women, both of whom think their bliss lies elsewhere, walk in each other’s shoes for a month only to discover that happiness is closer than they’d ever thought. (Who do you think you’d like to swap lives with?) |
| Monday June 16 7 p.m. LaPrade Chick Lit |
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| Edwards, Kim | FIC EDW |
| The Memory Keeper’s Daughter |
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Award-winning writer Kim Edwards’s “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” is a brilliantly crafted, completely riveting family drama that explores every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child, and she grew up without you? |
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Tuesday June 17 7 p.m. Bon Air Book Talks |
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| Robinson, Marilynne | FIC ROB |
| Gilead |
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Twenty-four years after her first novel, “Housekeeping,”
Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America’s heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows “even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order” (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life. |
| Wednesday June 18 10:30 a.m. Midlothian Classics and Award Winners |
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| Cook, Thomas H. | FIC COO |
| Red Leaves |
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When his teenaged son is the prime suspect in a child’s disappearance, a father must protect him from the community’s steadily growing suspicion, even when he’s not so sure his son is innocent. Red Leaves is a story of broken trust and one man’s heroic effort to hold fast the ties that bind him to everything he loves. |
| Monday June 23 1 p.m. Central Brown Bag Page Turners |
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| Kneale, Matthew | FIC KNE |
| English Passengers |
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Based on historical facts, “English Passengers” is an epic tale, packed with swashbuckling adventure, humor and memorable characters. Matthew Kneale renders the prejudices and follies of the Imperialist Age with dead-on accuracy and captures – through the voice and destiny of Peevay and his tribesmen – the irreversible tragedies it wrought. |
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| Barrett, Andrea | FIC BAR |
| The Voyage of the Narwhal |
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Delving into the history of Arctic exploration, this book follows the crew and commander of a ship searching for the open polar sea, as seen through the eyes of a scholar-naturalist. |
| Wednesday June 25 7:30 p.m. Midlothian |
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| King, Dean | 964.801 K |
| Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival |
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Everywhere hailed as a masterpiece of historical adventure, this enthralling narrative recounts the experiences of twelve American sailors who were shipwrecked off the coast of Africa in 1815, captured by desert nomads, sold into slavery, and subjected to a hellish two-month journey through the bone-dry heart of the Sahara. The ordeal of these men – who found themselves tested by barbarism, murder, starvation, death, dehydration, and hostile tribes that roamed the desert on camelback – is made indelibly vivid in this gripping account of courage, brotherhood and survival. |
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Thursday June 26 11 a.m. Clover Hill |
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