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, February 3, 2021 at 2pm via Webex to discuss, "Ellie and the Harpmaker" by Hazel Prior From Amazon: "Dan Hollis lives a happy, solitary life carving exquisite Celtic harps in his barn in the countryside of the English moors. Here he can be himself, away from social situations that he doesn’t always get right or completely understand. On the anniversary of her beloved father’s death, Ellie Jacobs takes a walk in the woods and comes across Dan’s barn. She is enchanted by his collection. Dan gives her a harp made of cherrywood to match her cherry socks. He stores it for her, ready for whenever she’d like to take lessons. Ellie begins visiting Dan almost daily and quickly learns that he isn’t like other people. He makes her sandwiches precisely cut into triangles and repeatedly counts the (seventeen) steps of the wooden staircase to the upstairs practice room. Ellie soon realizes Dan isn’t just different; in many ways, his world is better, and he gives her a fresh perspective on her own life." 
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AFTERNOON BOOK DISCUSSION
The Afternoon Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 2pm via Webex to discuss, "Rise: How a Family Built a House" by Cara Brookins. From Amazon: "After escaping an abusive marriage, Cara Brookins had four children to provide for and no one to turn to but herself. In desperate need of a home but without the means to buy one, she did something incredible. Equipped only with YouTube instructional videos, a small bank loan and a mile-wide stubborn streak, Cara built her own house from the foundation up with a wok crew made up of her four children. It would be the hardest thing she had ever done. With no experience nailing together anything bigger than a bookshelf, she and her kids poured concrete, framed the walls and laid bricks for their two story, five bedroom house. She had convinced herself that if they could build a house, they could rebuild their broken family. This must-read memoir traces one family's rise from battered victims to stronger, better versions of themselves all through one extraordinary do-it-yourself project." |
Evening Book Club
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The Evening Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 7pm via Webex to discuss "The View from Mary's Farm" by Edie Clark.
From back cover: "Not long ago, I met an old man at a wedding. He inquired where I lived and I told him I had bought Mary's farm up on top of Beech Hill. His rheumy eyes grew animated with recognition, oh, yes, he said, he had spent many a summer day on that farm. He especially remembered the lightning in this high place. "Does the phone still jump off the wall in a lightning storm?" he asked. I told him I'd never seen that happen. "Well," he went on, still clearly in the grip of these summer memories. "I can remember one storm, oh, it was a doozy. The cow was standing under the apple tree and a bolt came down and struck her. Dead as a mackerel!" Most of our winter storms are northeasters, which last two or three days. My house, perched as it is atop a high hill, became like a ship at sea in a furious storm. For days, the dim light outside revealed only horizontal snow racing past the windows. The deafening sound of the wind - a cacophony of screaming, howling, whistling - kept me awake more than one night. During one storm, I watched in alarm as snow piled against the window pane like water rising. Daylight did not come through that window again for weeks. This house has been here since 1792, a history even longer than our nation's. A young man who worked on the land here once uncovered a silver buckle in his digging. He polished it and framed it and gave it to Mary and she hung it on the wall in her kitchen. When I bought the farm, he came by and left me a brown bag full of pottery shards, buttons and glass chips, things he found here, things he felt should come back here. The nights increase and we reach the balancing moment of the equinox, a time so poised, so perfectly aligned that some claim they can make eggs stand on end. I don't need to see eggs standing on end to know that the earth has come into a good place. 
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The Evening Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 7pm via Webex to discuss "The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper" by Phaedra Patrick.
From Amazon: "Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden. But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam’s death, something changes. Sorting through Miriam’s possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he’s never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife’s secret life before they met—a journey that leads him to find hope and healing in the most unexpected places." |
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The Evening Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 7pm via Webex to discuss "Meet Me at the Museum" by Anne Youngson.
From Amazon: "In Denmark, Professor Anders Larsen, an urbane man of facts, has lost his wife and his hopes for the future. On an isolated English farm, Tina Hopgood is trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Both believe their love stories are over. Brought together by a shared fascination with the Tollund Man, subject Seamus Heaney's famous poem, they begin writing letters to one another. And from their vastly different worlds, they find they have more in common than they could have imagined. As they open up to one another about their lives, an unexpected friends blooms. But then Tina's letters stop coming, and Anders is thrown into despair. How far are they willing to go to write a new story for themselves?" |