BOOK DISCUSSIONS
Afternoons or evenings…the choice is yours!
Afternoon Book Club
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AFTERNOON BOOK DISCUSSION
The Afternoon Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 2pm via Webex to discuss "My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me" by Jennifer Teege. From Amazon: "When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happens to pluck a library book from the shelf, she has no idea that her life will be irrevocably altered. Recognizing photos of her mother and grandmother in the book, she discovers a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant chillingly depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List - a man known and reviled the world over.Although raised in an orphanage and eventually adopted, Teege had some contact with her biological mother and grandmother as a child. Yet neither revealed that Teege's grandfather was the Nazi "butcher of Plaszów", executed for crimes against humanity in 1946. The more Teege reads about Amon Goeth, the more certain she becomes: If her grandfather met her - a black woman - he would have killed her. Teege's discovery sends her, at age 38, into a severe depression - and on a quest to unearth and fully comprehend her family's haunted history. Her research takes her to Krakow - to the sites of the Jewish ghetto her grandfather "cleared" in 1943 and the Plaszów concentration camp he then commanded - and back to Israel, where she herself once attended college, learned fluent Hebrew, and formed lasting friendships. Teege struggles to reconnect with her estranged mother, Monika, and to accept that her beloved grandmother once lived in luxury as Amon Goeth's mistress at Plaszów. Teege's story is cowritten by award-winning journalist Nikola Sellmair, who also contributes a second, interwoven narrative that draws on original interviews with Teege's family and friends and adds historical context. Ultimately Teege's resolute search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation." 
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Evening Book Club
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EVENING BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP
The Evening Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 7pm via Webex to discuss "Ernest Hemingway: A Biography" by Mary V. Dearborn. From Amazon: "The first full biography of Ernest Hemingway in more than fifteen years is the first to draw on a wide array of never-before-used material, resulting in the most nuanced portrait to date of this complex, enigmatic artist. Considered in his time the greatest living American writer, Hemingway was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize whose personal demons undid him in the end, and whose novels and stories have influenced the writing of fiction for generations after his death. Mary V. Dearborn's revelatory investigation of his life and work substantially deepens our understanding of the artist and the man." 
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The Evening Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 7pm via Webex to discuss "Ask Again, Yes" by Mary Beth Keane.
From Amazon: "Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, rookie NYPD cops, are neighbors in the suburbs. What happens behind closed doors in both houses - the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the explosive events to come. In Mary Beth Keane's extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next 30 years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness." |