Books Now and Then (hybrid)

We’re observing Native American Heritage Month with There, There, by Tommy Orange.

This wondrous and shattering award-winning novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion, sacrifice and heroism.

To attend via Zoom, register here.

Our October read is The Reader by Bernhardt Schlink.
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany.
To attend via Zoom, register here.

Our title for Hispanic Heritage Month is Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño, a chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship.

Alberto Ruiz-Tagle is an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.

To attend via Zoom, register here.

This month we’re reading The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood. The Booker Prize winner’s first novel is both a scathingly funny satire of consumerism and a heady exploration of emotional cannibalism.

To attend via Zoom, register here.

Note the change of time for July. We’ll begin at 6 pm.

Our July read is Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life by Pamela Erens
With special guest, author Pamela Erens.
Erens explores the influence Middlemarch had on her development as a novelist and the way it called into question the narratives she told herself about her life.

If you’d like to attend on Zoom, register here.

The location for this month’s meeting is to be determined.

Our Pride Month title is Maurice by E.M.Forster

This tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England follows Maurice Hall from his youth and throughout his life. The poet, philosopher and gay rights activist Edward Carpenter and his partner presented a real-life model for the main characters.

Our AAPI Month title is Thousand Cranes Yasunari Kawabata. We will be virtual again this month.

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata’s Thousand Cranes is a luminous story of desire, regret, and the almost sensual nostalgia that binds the living to the dead. REGISTER HERE.

For National Poetry Month, we’ll be discussing selections from Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets. To receive a copy of the selected poems, please email programs@maplewoodlibrary.org.

We’ll be meeting on Zoom this month. Register here.

Our March title is Middlemarch by George Eliot

George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Through interweaving stories, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama.

The group will meet via Zoom this month. REGISTER HERE.

Our Black History Month read is Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.

Register here to attend via Zoom.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our January read is On Beauty by Zadie Smith, a wise, hilarious story of an interracial family whose misadventures in the culture wars serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. 

Register here to attend online

Upcoming titles:
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our December title is Howards End by E.M. Forster
In turn-of-the-century England, a strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life.

Register to attend online.

Upcoming titles are:
January: On Beauty by Zadie Smith
February: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
March: Middlemarch by George Eliot (This is a long read—plan ahead!)

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our Native American Heritage Month title is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, and that the awakening  of an ecological consciousness requires a celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. 

Register to attend online.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our October title is The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Based on real events, this work of historical fiction is set against a missing-heir trial that divided Victorian England. Who gets to tell their story, and who is to be believed?

Register to attend online.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our September title is Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli
An emotionally resonant, fiercely imaginative new novel about a family on the brink of a crisis, whose road trip across America collides with an immigration crisis at the southwestern border. Register here to attend via Zoom.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual
Our August title is Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
 Inspired by Dickens’ David Copperfield, this brilliant novel enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity. Register to attend on Zoom.

Our July title is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towle
Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose. Register to attend virtually.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our Pride Month title is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. It paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. Register to attend virtually.

This is a virtual only event

AAPI Month read is the short story “The Elephant Vanishes” by Haruki Murakami.  Murakami crosses the border between separate realities—and comes back bearing remarkable treasures.

REGISTER TO ATTEND VIRTUALLY

Our April title is Under Milk Wood; a Play for Voices by Dylan Thomas

A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh town, the play begins with dreams and ghosts before dawn and closes “as the rain of dusk brings on the bawdy night.”

REGISTER TO ATTEND VIRTUALLY

Our Women’s History Month title is The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray. J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, had to go to great lengths to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.
In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual. REGISTER TO ATTEND VIRTUALLY.

In person at Hilton Branch AND virtual

Our Black History Month title is Jazz by Toni Morrison. This profound story of love and obsession is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life.It transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery.

To attend via Zoom, REGISTER HERE.

Our January title is The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing

A contemporary Gothic horror story. In turbulent 1960s London, Harriet and David Lovatt manage to keep their family safely detached from outside turmoil--until the birth of their fifth child, who is gruesome and violent, and whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.

Register to attend online.

We’re reading two titles for December: Flush by Virginia Woolfe and Timbuktu by Paul Auster.
Flush, the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog offers insight into the poet’s life, but is seen by some as a commentary on a number of issues.
In the rich and compelling Timbuktu, Mr. Bones is the canine witness to his homeless owner’s illness and travels. 
REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.

Our November title is All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginsburg

This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy through the war years. Foremost are two families, for whom personal events may be as maiming as the tragedies of war. The novel gives a sharp portrait of a society hungry for change, but betrayed by war.

REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.

Our October title is Recitatif by Toni Morrison

In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom.
Toni Morrison describes her only short story as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial."
To attend via Zoom, REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.

In person at Hilton Branch and on Zoom

Our September title is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature.  REGISTER TO ATTEND ONLINE.

This meeting will be both in-person at Hilton Branch and virtual.

lOur Pride Month title is Just Kids by Patti Smith

A tenderly evocative memoir, that captures Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as young artists, when they were bohemian and completely unknown. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. 

Register to attend virtually

Upcoming titles: July: Jane Eyre, July: Wide Sargasso Sea, September: Anna Karenina