Do you love discussing a good book with a friend? If so, please visit one of Seymour Library’s book clubs. Upcoming meeting times and book selections are listed below. Feel free to come to a book club meeting even if you didn’t make it all the way through the book.
Coffee and Crime focuses on mysteries and crime fiction. One author or series is chosen for each meeting and members pick any title to read. The club meets the second Tuesday of the month at noon. Topics are chosen at each meeting for the upcoming month.
March 12 at noon: The Tess Monaghan series by Laura Lippman
April 9 at noon: The Under Suspicion series by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke.
Tea and Tales Book Club, the library’s newest group, reads a mix of historical fiction and the classics. The club meets the third Tuesday of each month at noon.
March 19 at noon: The Gods of Newport by John Jakes. Determined to secure entry into the elite social circles of late nineteenth-century Rhode Island, former robber baron Sam Driver enlists the help of a pair of social gadflies but finds his efforts complicated by his daughter’s dangerous romance with an impoverished young Irishman. The digital audiobook is also available through Hoopla.
April 16 at noon: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin, where he endures life in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold. The digital audiobook is also available through RB Digital.
History Book Club reads nonfiction that focuses on history. The group meets the third Saturday of the month at 11:30 a.m.
March 16 at 11:30 a.m.: In The Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington & The Battle of Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick. Details the campaign that ultimately won the Revolutionary War for the Americans, from the Battle of the Chesapeake–fought without a single American ship–to the victory at Yorktown.
April 27 at 11:30 a.m.: Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson & The Empire of the Imagination by Annette Gordon-Reed & Peter Onuf. A noted historian and a leading Jefferson scholar clarify philosophical questions about the Founding Father to trace his youth and development through the inconsistencies attributed to his character and his old age.
Read More Book Club at Panera Bread, our evening group, picks titles in support of the library’s reading challenge. The club meets the fourth Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m at Panera Bread, 6 Plaza Dr., Auburn.
March 27 at 7 p.m.: A book set in a different country
April 24 at 7 p.m.: A book set during the current season. You can decide if it is winter or spring.
Coffee and Conversation reads a wide assortment of books, fiction and nonfiction, and meets the last Thursday of the month at 10:30 a.m.
March 28 at 10:30 a.m.: The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant. Recounting the story of her life to her granddaughter, octogenarian Addie describes how she was raised in early-twentieth-century America by Jewish immigrant parents in a teeming multicultural neighborhood. The digital audiobook is also available through Hoopla.
April 25 at 10:30 a.m.: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. A socially awkward, routine-oriented loner teams up with a bumbling IT guy from her office to assist an elderly accident victim, forging a friendship that saves all three from lives of isolation and secret unhappiness.
Past Selections
February
A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline. Imagines the life story of Christina Olson, the subject of Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World,” describing the simple life she led on a remote Maine farm, her complicated relationship with her family, and the illness that incapacitated her. The digital audiobook is also available through Hoopla.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. Written more than a century ago by Frederick Douglass, a former slave who went on to become a famous orator, writer, journalist, minister, and leader, this masterpiece is one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded.
Something short (a novella, short story/stories)
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control. The ebook and digital audiobook are also available through Hoopla.
January
The Spenser series by Robert B. Parker
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Viewed with suspicion in the aftermath of a murder, Kya Clark, who has survived alone for years in a marsh near the North Carolina coast, becomes targeted by unthinkable forces.
The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.
A book with stars on the cover or in the title
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. A chance encounter with a handsome banker in a Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year’s Eve 1938 catapults witty Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne’er-do-well and a single-minded widow.