Virtual Book Club – July 8

On Wednesday July 8th at 2pm, the Virtual Book Club will be discussing The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney. Information about how to join the book club is listed below! We are using GoTo Meeting which will allow patrons to video chat with the librarian about the book.

Want to know what The Perfect Wife is about before you read the book? Check out the following description provided by the publisher:

A missing woman receives a second chance at life, thanks to her billionaire husband–but the consequences are deadly in this gripping psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Before. Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s an icon of the tech world, the founder of a lucrative robotics company. He tells Abbie that she is a gifted artist, an avid surfer, a loving mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago, and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss. She is a miracle of science. But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins questioning her husband’s motives–and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to Abbie half a decade ago? 

This book is also available in the following formats:
Virtual Book Club
Wed, Jul 8, 2020 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (CDT)
 
Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.
 
You can also dial in using your phone.
United States: +1 (571) 317-3122
 
Access Code: 522-793-053
 
New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:

Jenna Bush Hager JUNE Celebrity Book Club Pick

Have you joined our Best Sellers Club yet? We have started a new club for Davenport Public Library patrons that allow you to have automatic holds put on new releases from your favorite authors, stay current with three different celebrity book clubs, or receive nonfiction picks chosen by our librarians four times a year.

One of the celebrities on our Best Sellers Club is Jenna Bush Hager. The Read With Jenna book club picks a new book every month to read.

A Burning by Megha Majumdar is Jenna Bush Hager’s June 2020 pick. Curious what the book is about? Check out the following blurb provided by the publisher:

After a fiery attack on a train leaves 104 people dead, the fates of three people become inextricably entangled. Jivan, a bright, striving woman from the slums looking for a way out of poverty, is wrongly accused of planning the attack because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir, a slippery gym teacher from Jivan’s former high school, has hitched his aspirations to a rising right wing party, and his own ascent becomes increasingly linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely, a spirited, impoverished, relentlessly optimistic hjira, who harbors dreams of becoming a Bollywood star, can provide the alibi that would set Jivan free–but her appearance in court will have unexpected consequences that will change the course of all of their lives. A novel about fate, power, opportunity, and class; about innocence and guilt, betrayal and love, and the corrosive media cycle that manufactures falsehoods masquerading as truths–A Burning is a debut novel of exceptional power and urgency, haunting and beautiful, brutal, vibrant, impossible to forget.

This book is also available in the following format:

Virtual Book Club – June 17th

Have you joined our Virtual Book Club yet? Every Wednesday at 2pm central time, we discuss a new book! Using GoTo Meeting, patrons are able to practice social distancing while still participating in a book club through the library. On Wednesday, June 17th, we will be discussing Conviction by Denise Mina.

Conviction by Denise Mina is a 2019 piece of murder mystery detective fiction that was the December 2019 pick for Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Curious what the book is about? Check out the following blurb from the publisher:

A true crime podcast sets a trophy wife’s present life on a collision course with her secret past in this “blazingly intense” Reese Witherspoon book club pick and New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year (A. J. Finn).
The day Anna McDonald’s quiet, respectable life exploded started off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone.
Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people’s problems are much better than one’s own — a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna’s problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she’s taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened.
Then an unexpected visitor arrives on her front stoop, a meddling neighbor intervenes, and life as Anna knows it is well and truly over. The devils of her past are awakened — and they’re in hot pursuit. Convinced she has no other options, Anna goes on the run, and in pursuit of the truth, with a washed-up musician at her side and the podcast as her guide.
Conviction is “daredevil storytelling at its finest” (NPR’s Fresh Air), a breathtaking thriller from one of the most “superbly talented” writers of our time (Hank Phillippi Ryan, bestselling author of Trust Me).

This book is also available in the following formats:

To join the book club, follow the link below! We will be using GoTo Meeting for this program.

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.

https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/224067037

Access Code: 224-067-037

You can also dial in using your phone.

United States: +1 (646) 749-3112

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts:

https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/224067037

Virtual Book Club – The Hate U Give

Practice social distancing with us and join our Virtual Book Club this Wednesday, May 20th at 2pm, to discuss The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. We discuss a new book every week! Information about how to join the book club is listed further down in this post.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is a riveting read. Curious what this book is about? Check out the description from the publisher below:

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

This book is available in the following formats:

The Hate U Give is also available as a movie in two formats: DVD and blu-ray.

Virtual Book Club
Wed, May 20, 2020 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (CDT)

Please join my meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone.

https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/147920589
Access Code: 147-920-589

You can also dial in using your phone.
(For supported devices, tap a one-touch number below to join instantly.)

United States: +1 (571) 317-3122
– One-touch: tel:+15713173122,,147920589#

New to GoToMeeting? Get the app now and be ready when your first meeting starts: https://global.gotomeeting.com/install/147920589

Virtual Book Club

Practice social distancing with us and join our Virtual Book Club that meets every Wednesday at 2pm! We meet to discuss a new book every week. Follow us on social media and our website to get the link for each Virtual Book Club.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 6th, we will be discussing Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. This 2017 novel has been made into a hit show recently released on Hulu in 2020 starring Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, and Rosemarie DeWitt. We hope you join us to discuss this book!

Curious what Little Fires Everywhere is about? Check out the following blurb from the publisher!

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town–and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs. Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse

Did you know that the Davenport Public Library offers book clubs that you can join for free? We currently offer four book clubs that you can join: Book to Film, See YA, Short & Sweets, and True Crime Book Club. More information about the book clubs can be found on our website, by calling 563-326-7832, or by stopping by any service desk.

Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse is the September book club pick for See YA, our adult book club that reads young adult books.

Girl in the Blue Coat tells the story of a teenage girl fighting to survive in 1943 Amsterdam. Amsterdam in 1943 is now Nazi-occupied with citizens scared as family and friends are either being killed in front of them or are being shipped out of town in transports. Hanneke has found a way to help her family survive by working the black market.

Hired to work at a funeral home, her boss has ‘errands’ for her to run on the side. Hanneke is good at finding whatever people need. With a network of contacts, she hunts down cigarettes, makeup, perfume, lotions, food, etc. While out on a delivery, Hanneke is asked by a repeat customer to find a Jewish girl that the customer had previously been hiding. The girl has seemingly disappeared into thin air.

Beginning the search for the missing girl, Hanneke is drawn into the resistance. Asking questions leads her down a road filled with underground resistance, activities, and secrets. Not sure about wanting to join the resistance, but wanting to find the missing girl, Hanneke has to decide how far she is willing to go in order to save the missing girl and solve the mystery surrounding her disappearance.

Sound interesting? Want to join one of our book clubs or have questions? Stop by any Davenport Public Library location and we can help! If you can’t make it to the book club, read the book anyway and let us know what you thought about it in the comments below.

Online Reading Challenge – November Wrap-Up

My Friends, it has happened. I have experienced an Epic Failure this month – I did not complete a book for our Alternate Histories challenge.

It’s not the fault of the book (The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen Flynn), it just wasn’t the right time for me to connect with it. Does that ever happen to you? Where the book just doesn’t work for you, even though you think it should? I have had this happen more than once; I often (although not always) return to the book later and everything clicks. So I’ll put this book on my TBR (to-be-read) list and try again another day.

However! All is not lost – I did finish watching the first season of Outlander (from the Diana Gabaldon books) and enjoyed it so much that I’m going to continue to watch more seasons (two more are available on DVD; season four is currently airing). At the end of season one, Claire and Jamie have decided that they’re going to try to change history and therefore save the Scots. This is, of course, the great temptation of time travel – changing what went wrong. But what are the ripple effects of one change, even a small one? What is the cost and would it prevent the tragedy, or is it doomed to happen no matter what? Intriguing questions, if impossible to answer.

What about you – what did you read that was intriguing and interesting? Or was this an epic fail for you too? Let us know in the comments!

Online Reading Challenge – September Wrap-Up

Hello Online Challenge Readers!

How did your month of September go, reading-wise? Did you find something wonderful, or did this month fall short for you? Make sure to share!

I’m afraid, after a string of 8 straight good-to-excellent reads, September fell short for me. I was all set to read Love and Ruin by Paula McLain, but it never caught my interest enough to stick with it. Maybe it was the subject matter – the main characters were often abrasive and made many poor decisions. Maybe it was my mood or the weather, or the fact that I had other things going on and taking up my time. Who knows why a book and reader fail to connect? Often it’s just timing – the right book at the right moment. And what doesn’t work at one time, might be perfect later. Fortunately, I know where there are hundreds of other books, all free for checking out! There’s always another great read waiting!

What about you – how did your reading go in September? And, have you ever picked up a book and found, no matter how badly you wanted to read it, it just wasn’t for you? What have been your epic book fails? Let us know your experiences in the comments!

Online Reading Challenge – Mid-Month Check In

Hello All!

Are you enjoying the June Reading Challenge? Have you found something fun to read? Or are you still looking for the right title?

I’ve started reading my book (A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle). I’m still trying to keep all the “mrs’s” straight, but I’m quickly getting caught up in the story. What I’ve found interesting is how other people react when I ask if they’ve read this book. I heard a lot of enthusiastic yeses; everyone seemed to love it. Best response, though, was from a co-worker who told me that A Wrinkle in Time was the book made her a library patron. When the teacher at school that was reading it to her class wasn’t reading fast enough for Shelley, she asked her Mom to take her to the library so that she could check out a copy. Thus began a lifelong love affair with reading (and, I hope, libraries!)

Another great story came from a Challenge reader that commented she is going to read a book written in 1898 that had been a childhood favorite of her mother. I love this idea! It shows how books are a bridge – to the past, to the future, to knowledge, to entertainment and that they can also be a connection to the people in our lives. Books (stories) are magic.

Let us know what you’re reading and, maybe, why you chose what you did!

 

 

Underground Books: American War by Omar El Akkad

Underground Books is a monthly book club that meets at 6:00 pm on the second Monday of the month at Main. We’re readers of books that are not typical book club fare – the subversive, the under-the radar, and the controversial. Every month, I’ll give a preview of what we’re reading, questions the book raises and start a discussion online for those who can’t make in person. Welcome to The Underground!

Hello readers! This month’s book is the 2017 novel American War by Omar El Akkad. Set roughly 60 years in the future in an America ravaged by climate change and a second civil war, it’s a story about the destruction of a nation, a family and a person by war. A cautionary tale that raises serious issues about our current national and global state of affairs, and what the future may hold. A heavy subject, yes, but worth the journey.

Opening in 2075,  the earth has warmed, the oceans have enveloped the coasts and submerged what little is left after increasingly severe storms batter the land. In response to multiple environmental disasters across the continent, the federal government – now based in Columbus, Ohio – bans the use of fossil fuels. The southern states defy the ban, and after a series of terrorist attacks culminating in the assassination of the president, the U.S. is again plunged into civil war.  This is a war of modern times –  out-of-control drones, homicide bombers, guerilla warfare, detainment camps and biological weapons deployed against an entire state.

The novel follows the Chestnut family of flood-prone Louisiana, displaced from their home by the Battles of East Texas to an overcrowded refugee camp on the border of Tennessee. Here Sarat Chestnut comes of age among the mundane cruelties of war.  She and her family – her older brother Simon, twin sister Dana, and mother Martina – try to make a life for themselves while waiting for the end of the war.  Sarat, already considered an outsider because of her tall and awkward build, grows rebellious and is befriended by a mysterious older man who once fought overseas for the North, or, at least, the North when the country was whole. He feeds her a steady diet of Southern mythos, sending her on a path to become an instrument of revenge.  As the narrator says in the prologue, “This isn’t a story about war. It’s about ruin.”

Assorted musings:

  • When I chose this book, I based it on, of course, the numerous good reviews it had received, and I was intrigued by concept. Given the current political climate, the possibility of another civil war in the U.S. has been raised more than once. What surprised me, however, was that the crux of the war was fossil fuels. I can understand the idea of Southern states objecting to the exercise of broad federal power, and a desire to protect mining and off-shore drilling, but what I noticed most was the absence of any mention of race or ethnicity. At the start of the novel, Sarat is described as having “fuzzy” hair, and that her father had immigrated from Mexico, but that’s the only mention of race in the entire novel. I suppose the argument could be made that by 2075, race is no longer an issue, but if we’re still arguing about red vs. blue and states’ rights vs. federal authority, I have a hard time suspending that disbelief.
  • The author is an award-winning journalist born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, now living in Oregon, and he reported extensively on Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and the Arab Spring. El Akkad’s journalistic expertise is apparent in this novel, as major aspects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are transported to America. In many cases, it’s a note-for-note transcription. I wonder if that works for everyone? While the purpose of the novel is, arguably, to create empathy for the very real wars happening now and to also serve as a cautionary tale, could the novel have taken more liberties? I don’t mean that it should have been a Hunger Games-esque battle royale, but something more adapted to the setting.

Quotes I would have underlined if it wasn’t a library book:

“How long ago was this?” she asked.
“Must have been around ’21 or ’22,” said Gaines.  “Around the time they sent us over there for the third time, right around the Fifth Spring.”
Joe leaned close to Sarat; he looked at the photograph again. “That’s right,” he said. “I remember, I remember when it was still your guns and our blood.” (p. 139)

She remembered something Albert Gaines once told her all those years ago in Patience. He said when a Southerner tells you what they’re fighting for, you can agree or disagree, but you can’t ever call it a lie. Right or wrong, he said, a man from our country always says exactly what he means , and stands by what he says.
Even that, it turned out, was a lie. (p. 278)

You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories. (p. 280)

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! And join us on April 9th at 6:00 at Main to discuss in real life! Next month, we’ll be reading Difficult Women by Roxane Gay – copies available at Main, or pick one up wherever convenient!