Tuesday, December 16, 2014

January 2015: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd + 2014 Holiday Party Recap!

From the 2014 Viking/Penguin hardcover edition: "Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimkes’ daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Sue Monk Kidd’s sweeping new novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday in 1803, when she is given ownership of ten-year-old Handful, who is to be her waiting maid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement, and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired in part by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in search for something better, and Charlotte’s lover, Denmark Vesey, a charismatic free black man who is planning insurrection."

We will meet to discuss The Invention of Wings on Thursday, January 29, 2015, at 7pm at the Atlantic Highlands Branch of the Monmouth County Library located at 100 First Avenue (inside Borough Hall) in Atlantic Highlands.

Looking ahead, here is the list of books for 2015 (starting with February):

Feb - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
March - Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
April - Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck
May - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
June - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
July - Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
August - Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis
Sep - Middletown, America by Gail Sheehy
Oct - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Nov/Dec - The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Now it's time for our Holiday Party Wrap-Up from 12/4/14!

Here are the results for the most and the least favorite books we read in 2014:

Favorite - The Light between Oceans
Runner up - The City of Ember
Least favorite - The Prince

And here are some photos from our Seabiscuit chat and Holiday Party:



Photo credits: Lori M.




Photo credits: Jo W.
Happy Holidays everyone!

Here's a virtual sparkling cider toast to a healthy and Happy New Year for 2015 and here's to another year filled with more great discussions!