The Marshall Library's Book Club meets on the third Tuesday of every other month, from 6:30-8pm.
Teens and adultsare welcome to join us for great discussions and snacks! There is no charge to join.
Please RSVP to staff@marlib.org or call 608-655-3123.
Please have each book read by the meeting date.
2019 meetings are:
Tues. November 19th: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Profoundly moving and gracefully told, Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them. Betrayed by her wealthy lover, Sunja finds unexpected salvation when a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and bring her to Japan to start a new life.
Tues. Jan. 21st, 6:30pm
Book to Be Determined-- Please Vote!
Tues. March 17th, 6:30pm
Book to Be Determined-- Please Vote!
Tues. May 19th, 6:30pm
Book to Be Determined-- Please Vote!
If you haven't already voted, please check out other book options below and vote for our January, March, and May books. We had all talked about doing The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society over Dec/Jan, as it's a short book for a busy time, but we will abide by the majority vote.
Please send me an email at staff@marlib.org with your 3 votes from the choices below!
Code Talkers by Joseph Bruchac
Throughout World War II, in the conflict fought against Japan, Navajo code talkers were a crucial part of the U.S. effort, sending messages back and forth in an unbreakable code that used their native language. They braved some of the heaviest fighting of the war, and with their code, they saved countless American lives. Yet their story remained classified for more than twenty years.
But now Joseph Bruchac brings their stories to life for young adults through the riveting fictional tale of Ned Begay, a sixteen-year-old Navajo boy who becomes a code talker. His grueling journey is eye-opening and inspiring. This deeply affecting novel honors all of those young men, like Ned, who dared to serve, and it honors the culture and language of the Navajo Indians.
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village's all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook's mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.
Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook's differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother's position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.
DEFENDING JACOB BY WILLIAM LANDAY
Andy and Laurie Barber have a comfortable life in their suburban town where Andy is a respected district attorney. But their lives are upended when their 14-year-old son Jacob is charged with the murder of a fellow student. As the trial unfolds, the family fractures as the parents are forced to confront the evidence that Jacob may indeed be capable of this horrible crime. The book poses thought-provoking questions about parental responsibility and how far a parent might go to protect their child.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."
In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose reprecussions will echo down the decades.
A Room of One’s Own by Viginia Woolf
A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.
THE PEARL THAT BROKE ITS SHELL BY NADIA HASHIMI
This book tells the parallel stories of two Afghan women: Rahima, who lives in Kabul in 2007, and her great aunt Shekiba who lived a century earlier. Both women suffer abuse at the hands of the men who control their lives, as they desperately long for freedom in a culture that prohibits it at every turn. This is an eye-opening story that illustrates the dangers many women encounter in Afghanistan, and the resilience and courage needed in the face of such oppression.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and she would do it alone.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. . . .
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's smoke, mazes, and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes - and the stuff of nightmare.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
Books we have previously read:
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford Enlish Dictionary by Simon Winchester
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Boy at the Keyhole by Stephen Giles
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The Dry by Jane Harper