Next Meeting - Monday, October 24, 2016
Noon - 1:00 PM
Welcome Friends! Have you heard about our book club? Once a month we all read the same book and then get together over lunch and share our thoughts. These are fun, interesting and stimulating conversations. Each month I am enlightened by the insight my fellow readers bring to the discussion. It is wonderful to hear how differently we all interpret the same text. Plus it's just the nicest bunch of people you can imagine!!

Please stop by the Athol Public Library to pick up your copy of the latest title. No registration is required and the group is open to everyone. Not from the area? Check with your local library for access to our current selection or any of the books on our list.
What We Are Reading Next
​Scandal has derailed Journalist Kitty Logan's career, a setback that is soon compounded by an even more devastating loss. Constance, the woman who taught Kitty everything she knew, is dying. At her mentor's bedside, Kitty asks her, "What is the one story you always wanted to write?" The answer lies in a single sheet of paper buried in Constance's office--a list of 100 names--with no notes or explanation. But before Kitty can talk to her friend, it is too late. Determined to unlock the mystery and rebuild her own shaky confidence, Kitty throws herself into the investigation, using her skills and savvy to track down each of the names on the list and uncover their connection. Meeting these ordinary people and learning their stories, Kitty begins to piece together an unexpected portrait of Constance's life...and starts to understand her own
What we read in March, 2016
Through the voice of eleven-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboy stories, Peace Like a River tells of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been controversially charged with murder. Sprinkled with playful and warmhearted nods to biblical tales, classic American novels such as Huckleberry Finn, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Westerns of Zane Grey, Peace Like a River brilliantly incorporates the best elements of all these genres and ultimately earns its own prominent and enduring place on the shelf among them. Reuben Land was born with no air in his lungs, and it was only when his father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that his lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma thenceforth, but he is a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father can overturn the laws of nature. When Reuben's older brother, Davy, kills two marauders who have come to harm the family, the town is divided between those who see him as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded murderer. On the morning of the trial, Davy escapes from his cell, and when his family finds out they decide to go forth into the unknown in search of him. With Jeremiah -- whose faith is the stuff of legend -- at the helm, the family covers territory far more glorious than even the Badlands, where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer. By the time the journey is over, they will have traversed boundaries of a different nature entirely. Marked by a soul-expanding sense of place and a love of storytelling, Peace Like a River is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a romance, and a heartfelt meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.
What we read / watched in February 2016
The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman clan has congregated in years. There is, however, one conspicuous absence: Judd's wife, Jen, whose affair with his radio- shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the demise of his father and his marriage, Judd joins his dysfunctional family as they reluctantly sit shiva-and spend seven days and nights under the same roof. The week quickly spins out of control as longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed and old passions are reawakened. Then Jen delivers the clincher: she's pregnant.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's (One Last Thing Before I Go) most accomplished work to date, and a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.
What we read in November 2016
It’s 1936 and the Great Depression has taken its toll. Up in the high country of the snow-covered Rocky Mountains, eighty-six-year-old Hennie Comfort has lived in Middle Swan, Colorado, since before it was Colorado. When she first meets seventeen-year-old Nit Spindle, Hennie is drawn to the grieving young girl. Nit and her husband have come to this small mining town in search of work, but the loneliness and loss Nit feels are almost too much to bear. One day she notices an old sign that reads prayers for sale in front of Hennie’s house. Hennie doesn’t actually take money for her prayers, never has, but she invites the skinny girl in anyway. The harsh conditions of life that each has endured create an instant bond, and a friendship is born, one in which the deepest of hardships are shared and the darkest of secrets are confessed.
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What we read in October 2015
Timely and timeless, this is a dramatic and deeply moving novel about an act of violence in a small, Southern town and the repercussions that will forever change a young man's view of human cruelty and compassion.

After seeing the death of his younger brother in a terrible home accident, fourteen-year-old Kevin and his grieving mother are sent for the summer to live with Kevin's grandfather. In this peeled-paint coal town deep in Appalachia, Kevin quickly falls in with a half-wild hollow kid named Buzzy Fink who schools him in the mysteries and magnificence of the woods. The events of this fateful summer will affect the entire town of Medgar, Kentucky.

Medgar is beset by a massive mountaintop removal operation that is blowing up the hills and back filling the hollows. Kevin's grandfather and others in town attempt to rally the citizens against the "company" and its powerful owner to stop the plunder of their mountain heritage. When Buzzy witnesses a brutal hate crime, a sequence is set in play that tests Buzzy and Kevin to their absolute limits in an epic struggle for survival in the Kentucky mountains.

Redemptive and emotionally resonant, THE SECRET WISDOM OF THE EARTH is narrated by an adult Kevin looking back on the summer when he sloughed the coverings of a boy and took his first faltering steps as a man. His story is one with a rich cast of characters and an ambitious effort to reclaim a once great community.
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What we read in September 2015
A New York Times Bestselling Author Billie Breslin traveled from her California home to take a job at Delicious, the most iconic food magazine in New York. When the publication is suddenly shut down, the staff, now Billie's extended family,must move on. But Billie is offered the job of staying behind in the deserted downtown mansion offices to uphold the "Delicious Guarantee." What she doesn't know is that this boring, lonely job will be the portal to a life-changing discovery.

The Group Review: Delicious! was our first read after the summer break.  It was terrific to have everyone back together again and I was pleased to see new faces as well.  Before I tell you what we thought of the book, let's talk about the Gingerbread. Billie's Gingerbread plays a predominant role in this coming of age tale for foodies.  Because the recipe is included in the book, and because desert is an important part of our book group I had to make it. Other than omitting the whiskey soak (we're an alcohol free household!) I followed the recipe to the letter - grinding all the spices by hand thanks to Carol Ann and her mortar and pestle. It was time consuming and hard work! However, in the end we were rewarded with an aromatic, tender cake that explodes with a full richness of flavor! I don't know that I will be making it again, but for my book group friends it was totally worth the effort!

Now about the book.  We are a big group. About 15 people attended the September meeting, and overall the book was well received. Many folks commented on the depth and variety of different subjects that are blended together to create the full tale. The main character, Billie is at the center and with her there is the magazine, the mansion, her sister and father, the complainer, Sal and the cheese shop, the secret library, James Beard and Lulu and even more. Personally I think everything was combined with just the right balance, but a few in the group disagree and I understand. Although the story has predictable events, many of us easily overlooked them and enjoyed the manner in which they are served.
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What we read in June 2015
The summer of 1927 began with one of the signature events of the twentieth century: on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to cross the Atlantic by plane nonstop, and when he landed, he ignited an explosion of worldwide rapture and instantly became the most famous person on the planet. Meanwhile, the titanically talented Babe Ruth was beginning his assault on the home run record, which would culminate on September 30 with his sixtieth blast, one of the most resonant and durable records in sports history. In between those dates a Queens housewife named Ruth Snyder and her corset-salesman lover garroted her husband, leading to a murder trial that became a huge tabloid sensation. The American South was clobbered by unprecedented rain and by flooding of the Mississippi basin. The gangster Al Capone tightened his grip on the illegal booze business through a gaudy and murderous reign of terror and municipal corruption. The first true "talking picture," Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, was filmed and forever changed the motion picture industry. The four most powerful central bankers on earth met in secret session on a Long Island estate and made a fateful decision that virtually guaranteed a future crash and depression. All this and much, much more transpired in that epochal summer of 1927.​
It appears that What we read in March, April and May has disappeared!
I guess that means I need to re-enter them!
What we read in February 2015
In the dark days of war, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up—along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans—and taken to the Manzanar prison camp.

Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever…and spur her to sins of her own.
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What we read in January 2015
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State -- and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone. Strayed vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
The Group Review: Wild was met with diversely different opinions. As varied as the adventures Cheryl had on the trail. We only read non-fiction a few times a year, just to mix things up and expand our horizons a bit. I think that majority of the group was disappointed. After all, the book was on the best seller list for over a year, and it was made into a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon (who some say will be nominated for an Oscar) - what did others get that we didn't? For one thing, I think that we were expecting a book about hiking the PCT. Instead, we got the memoir of a young woman struggling to deal with the death of her mother (among other things), and find her place in the world. Using the trail as a vehicle for delivering her story was indeed a clever idea. Unfortunately, many of us were not able to get into her activities on (or off) the trail.
 What we read in December 2014
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
The Group Review: The Snow Child is one of the rare books that was met with mixed reviews. We often tend to lean with a majority one way or the other, but not this time. Our group was all over the place: there were the few who loved it; those who thought it was okay;  one who didn't finish; and others who had to push themselves to the end. One of most commonly expressed observations was the element of fantasy. Was she a real girl or a fairy tale? The author left much up to the reader to imagine and decide. The descriptions of the Alaska wilderness and the are so vivid that you may find yourself reaching for a blanket or putting another log on the fire. 
What we read in November 2014
Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser, Dorrie Curtis. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a single mother in her thirties, to drop everything and drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati--with no clear explanation why--tomorrow. Over the years, Dorrie and Isabelle have developed more than just a business relationship: they are friends. But Dorrie, fretting over the new man in her life and her teenage son's irresponsible choices, still wonders why Isabelle chose her. Isabelle confesses that, as a willful teen in 1930s Kentucky, she fell deeply in love with Robert Prewitt, a would-be doctor and the black son of her family's housekeeper--in a town where blacks weren't allowed after dark. The tale of their forbidden relationship and its tragic consequences makes it clear Dorrie and Isabelle are headed for a gathering of the utmost importance and that the history of Isabelle's first and greatest love just might help Dorrie find her own way.
What we read in October 2014
On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art today worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history. Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there’s more to this crime than meets the eye. 
 
 Making a living reproducing famous artworks for a popular online retailer and desperate to improve her situation, Claire is lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting—a Degas masterpiece stolen from the Gardner Museum—in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when that very same long-missing Degas painting is delivered to Claire’s studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery. 
 
 Her desperate search for the truth leads Claire into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life.
The Group Review: We waited a long time to read this book!  It seem like every book club in MA has read it at some point!  So was it worth the wait? Yes - with reservations!  It's safe to say that other than one person we all finished and were generally satisfied.  Everyone (minus one) was able to identify parts of the book that they enjoyed.  Most found the details of the art and forgery interesting, and learned much about the business of forging paintings!  Claire was met with mixed feelings, although it's safe to say we all agreed she was a very good artist who for various reasons didn't receive the positive recognition she deserved.  Isabella's letters were a highlight for many, but the story struggled to flow from the past to the present.  We appreciated the author sharing the parts of the story that were factual and those that she created.  Overall I'd say The Art Forger averaged 2.5 stars out of 5!
What we read in September 2014
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn't seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
 
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.
The Group Review: It was easy choosing this book to kick off the fall reading season. I read it when it came out in 2012 and wanted to share it with the group as soon as I finished.  As with many new, popular titles it took some time for enough copies to be available to accommodate our large group. There were 19 of us at this months meeting. It was nice to welcome some new folks as well as many of the regulars.

I had a feeling that Harold would be well received, and I wasn't disappointed! I also thought that Harold would give us plenty to talk about. A book that everyone likes can be challenging. How many different ways can you say, "I liked it, it was good."? What happened with Harold is that we seemed to like him for different reasons. One thing we all agreed on- his shoes!!
2014-2015 Reading List
What we read in June 2014
Noontime Book Group
The APL noontime book group gives the Little Bookstore all thumbs up!!
Wendy Welch and her husband had always dreamed of owning a bookstore. When the opportunity to escape a toxic work environment and run to a struggling Virginia coal-mining town presented itself, they took the plunge. They chose to ignore all the talk about the "death of the book," of the closing of bookstores across the nation, and of the difficult economic environment. Six years later they have carved a bookstore and a life out of an Appalachian mountain community. A story of beating bad odds with grace, ingenuity, good books, and single malt, this memoir chronicles two bibliophiles discovering unlikely ways in which daily living and literature intertwine. Their customers come to the shop looking for the kind of interactive wisdom electronics don't spark. There, they find friendship, community, and the uncommon pleasure of a good book in good company.

What the group thought:  This book was a big hit with every single member of our group - all 22 of us!!  This was our biggest gathering yet and we had a lot of fun talking about the Little Bookstore.  Overall, we found it very easy to read.  Wendy is a natural story teller and the words effortlessly flow off the page making it hard to put down.  Through every escapade, adventure, loss, struggle and success you become part of Wendy and Jack's inner circle feeling every emotion right along with them.  We all agree that were Big Stone Gap in New England we'd be taking a road trip to visit all the folks we came to know in the book.  Several members of our group have already recommended it to their friends and I know more than one will be adding a copy to their personal library. 
  
For an added bit of fun I reached out Wendy on Facebook and told her about our group.  She was funny and thankful and happy to hear from us - even posting our picture the bookstores page!  Thanks Wendy!
What we read in May 2014
An internationally bestselling phenomenon: the darkly suspenseful, highly controversial tale of two families struggling to make the hardest decision of their lives -- all over the course of one meal.

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse -- the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.
     Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.
     Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.
What we read in April 2014
Sam Capra is living the life of his dreams. He's a brilliant young CIA agent, stationed in London. His wife Lucy is seven months pregnant with their first child. They have a wonderful home, and are deeply in love. They have everything they could hope for...until they lose it all in one horrifying moment. On a bright, sunny day, Sam receives a call from Lucy while he's at work. She tells him to leave the building immediately. He does...just before it explodes, killing everyone inside. Lucy vanishes, and Sam wakes up in a prison cell. As the lone survivor of the attack, he is branded by the CIA as a murderer and a traitor. Escaping from the agency, Sam launches into a desperate hunt to save his kidnapped wife and child, and to reveal the unknown enemy who has set him up and stolen his family. But the destruction of Sam's life was only step on in an extraordinary plot-and now Sam must become a new kind of hero.
What we read in March 2014
At age seventy-five, Sarah thought that her life was settled and assured: she and Charles would live out their days in the quiet comfort of their rural Vermont home. But now, with Charles gone, Sarah is unable to find peace. That is, until her home unforeseeably becomes an unruly refuge for wayward souls. First comes her teenage granddaughter Lottie, who can't abide living with her mother. She's soon joined by two similarly displaced young friends; an Israeli soldier who needs a retreat; a young mother and son who've lost their home to a fire; and a woman and her infant fleeing a violent partner.

In the tradition of Jane Smiley and Sue Miller, author Kate Maloy has crafted a wise and gratifying novel about a woman who finds the most rewarding role of her life just when she thought the best years were over.
What we read in February 2014
Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” wrote The New Yorker on the publication of her Pulitzer Prize–winning Olive Kitteridge. The San Francisco Chronicle praised Strout’s “magnificent gift for humanizing characters.” Now the acclaimed author returns with a stunning novel as powerful and moving as any work in contemporary literature.
 
Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan—the Burgess sibling who stayed behind—urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.
 
With a rare combination of brilliant storytelling, exquisite prose, and remarkable insight into character, Elizabeth Strout has brought to life two deeply human protagonists whose struggles and triumphs will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page. Tender, tough-minded, loving, and deeply illuminating about the ties that bind us to family and home, The Burgess Boys is Elizabeth Strout’s newest and perhaps most astonishing work of literary art.
What we read in October 2013
In New York Times bestselling author Tracy Chevalier’s newest historical saga, she introduces Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker who moves to Ohio in 1850, only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape.

Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.

However, drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, Honor befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs.

A powerful journey brimming with color and drama, The Last Runaway is Tracy Chevalier’s vivid engagement with an iconic part of American history. (from Amazon.com)
What we read in September 2013
A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.

With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the twenty-first century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that’s rare to the world of literary fiction. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious reader, no matter the time of day.
Copies of the book are now available at the Athol Public Library.
Not a member of our community?  Check with your local library, bookseller or online and read along with us!

Here's What We Read Last Year

Interested in the Details??

Click on the cover to go to LibraryThing.  There you'll find all the information you could need about each title.  Including reviews, recommendations and other books with similar tags.

Booked for Lunch
A Book Discussion Group at the Athol Public Library

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Once a month we get together for a lively discussion on the selected title.  We read popular fiction as well as non-fiction.  Our choices are typically newer, but a classic slips in once in a while! It's an informal setting and everyone is welcome to attend.  You can come once or come every month, it's up to you. 

If you have any questions please give me a call at 978-249-9515, or email me at [email protected]

Hope to see you there! - Robin B.


Last Year's Selection Survey
I'm leaving the survey just in case you want to read one of the titles we didn't choose. 
(they all look good to me!!)