Lucia, Lucia by A. Trigiani, July 2012

From goodreads.com:  It is 1950 in glittering, vibrant New York City. Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The postwar boom is ripe with opportunities for talented girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes an apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at chic B. Altman's department store on Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, the steadfast Dante DeMartino, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardized, and the Sartoris' honor is tested. 

For author info, please click here for her website.

We'll meet at the Library to discuss Lucia, Lucia on Thursday, July 26, 2012 at 7pm.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, June 2012

From goodreads: "The beloved American classic about a young girl's coming-of-age at the turn of the century, Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience."

Related links:
Click here for the Wikipedia Biography of author Betty Smith.
Click here for the Harper Collins Publishers page for Betty Smith.

We will meet to discuss A Tree Grows In Brooklyn on Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 7pm at the Library.  (Located at Borough Hall, 100 First Avenue).

Please note that new titles for 2013 have been added to the beginning of our Available Titles Page.  Click here to be taken directly to the page or scoll up and click on "Available Titles".  The hard copy of the list is available at the Library desk.

My Antonia by Willa Cather, May 2012

"No romantic novel ever written in America... is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia.” —H. L. Mencken

From goodreads.com: Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My Ántonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My Ántonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America’s early pioneers.

Related links:
The Willa Cather Foundation
Wikipedia Bio/Willa Cather
PBS American Masters/About Willa Cather

We'll meet to discuss this novel on Thursday, May 31, 2012 at 7pm at the Library (located once again at 100 First Avenue).

The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom - April 2012

From the Touchstone/Simon and Schuster 369 pg. paperback edition:

"When a white servant girl violates the order of Plantation Society, she unleashes a tradgedy that exposes the worst and the best in the people she has come to call her family.

Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven -year-old-Lavinia, with no memory of her past, arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.

Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself periolously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk."

For a biography of author Kathleen Grissom, in her own words, please click here to go to her site.

We will meet at the Library at its' new and permanent home back at the newly renovated Borough Hall on Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at 7pm to discuss The Kitchen House as the Grand Re-Opening of the Library falls on our normal meeting day in April. (Email reminders for April will include information on the Grand Re-Opening Celebration!)

Lastly, the Library will be closed in Both locations from April 9th through the 22nd during its' move. Books can still be dropped off at the book drop on Avenue C from the 9th until the 22nd.

The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle - March 2012

From Penguin.com (usa): "Paula Spencer is the narrator and unlikely heroine of Roddy Doyle's fifth novel, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. The mother of four children, she lives in a working-class suburb of Dublin. She is also a battered wife and an alcoholic. Paula's husband, Charlo, has been killed while escaping the scene of a crime he committed. Though Paula threw him out a couple of years ago, she recalls their early times together, filled with joy and lust. She remembers her rebellious adolescence, boys she dated and fantasized about, family outings, and summers at the sea, and she reflects on the events in her life that brought her to where she is today.

Doyle's portrait of a working-class woman in contemporary Ireland illuminates many of the problems facing that country's working poor, yet Paula is a wonderfully unique character—honest about her feelings, fearless in her efforts to protect her family, subject to fits of anger and depression that threaten to undo all that she has accomplished. Doyle takes his time revealing Paula to us. This account of her life is not chronological but spiraling, driven by memory and recurring images that spark these memories. Roddy Doyle's lean prose and his uncanny ear for dialogue brilliantly offset the drama that unfolds as Paula tells her story. It is this restraint that makes his writing so compelling, that allows us to accept, understand, and champion Paula in her struggle to reclaim her dignity.

Roddy Doyle jokingly acknowledges that he might have titled the novel Paula Spencer Boo Hoo Hoo. However, there is no doubt that he has reached a new level of mastery in this deceptively complex portrait of a woman and a family in trouble."

We'll meet to discuss this novel at the Library on Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7pm.

To visit the author's website for more information on him and his works, click here.

Julius Ceasar by William Shakespeare, February 2012 + Something New + Short Story Group Reminder

From Goodreads:

"In this striking tragedy of political conflict, Shakespeare turns to the ancient Roman world and to the famous assassination of Julius Caesar by his republican opponents. Following a successful
campaign in Spain, Julius Caesar returns to Rome and is offered the
crown. Fearing for the Republic, Cassius heads a conspiracy to murder Caesar, enlisting the noble Brutus to his ranks. With Caesar dead, Mark Anthony turns popular opinion against the conspirators, leaving the audience to question the nature of honour, ambition and integrity as depicted in the characters of Caesar and Brutus."

We'll meet at the Library on Thursday, February 23, 2012, at 7pm to discuss this play.

Something new: Inspired by our discussion last night at the Library, in an effort to help those who would like to find out about new books coming out, I've created a "Reading Sites" page for the blog where I've listed several book sites that you can get to just by clicking on each name. Just click on "Reading Sites" which appears just under the blog logo above to get to the page.  (If you use a book site that isn't listed, let me know what it is and I'll add it to the list! ~Jo)

Short Story Group reminder: We'll meet at the Library to discuss Edith Wharton's "All Souls" on Thursday, February 9, 2012, at 7pm. For more info, just scroll down to the previous post.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, January 2012

From the authors website:
"It’s 1978 and 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan is the self-proclaimed spinster of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a sleepy hamlet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the local pharmacist, she’s been keeping the town folks’ secrets for years, but she’s about to discover a skeleton in her own family’s tidy closet that will blow the lid right off her quiet, uneventful life.Soon she finds herself juggling two marriage proposals, conducting a no-holds-barred family feud, directing the prestigious Outdoor Drama and keeping the town’s dysfunctional Rescue Squad on its toes.

The crazy-quilt of characters includes Jack MacChesney (“Jack Mac” to his friends), the stoic miner with coal dust on his hands but love in his heart; Iva Lou Wade, the sexpot Bookmobile librarian; Theodore Tipton, band leader extraordinaire; Preacher Elmo Gaspar, the snake-handling Freewill Baptist; and Pearl Grimes, a coal-miner’s daughter on the verge of a miraculous transformation, thanks to Ave’s intervention."

For info on the author, please click here to view her website.

We'll meet at the Library on Thursday, January 26, 2012 to discuss this novel. (Library location will be updated here as soon as possible).

You can view the list of our 2012 selections by clicking here.

Until then, blessings for a happy Holiday season and for the coming New Year!