Book Club Selections for Fall 2019- Winter 2020
October 14th Book: Educated by Tara Westover (nonfiction) An unforgettable memoir about a young girl, who kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge. Her family was so isolated that there was no one to ensure that the children received an education nor intervened when one of her older brothers became violent. She grows up working as hard as her brothers in her father's junk yard. When one of the oldest brothers gets himself into college, Tara starts out on her own quest for knowledge which takes her to Brigham Young, Harvard and finally Cambridge.
November 4th Book: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility-a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. 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.
December 9th Book: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life-until the unthinkable happens. Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.
January 13th Book: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann The story of the 1920s murders of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma for their oil rights leading to the establishment of the FBI.
February 10th Book: BECOMING MICHELLE by Michelle Obama In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.
March 2nd Book: Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly Inspired by actual events, the author has woven together the stories of three women during World War Two that reveal the bravery, cowardice and cruelty of the time. It is set against the harrowing backdrop of Europe in thrall to Nazi Germany, much of it in Ravensbruck, the notorious concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents from New York to Paris, Germany and Poland, as two of these women strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
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