|
|
Join us the 2nd Wednesday of the month to share favorite books, authors, or series. Literary Salon is a no-rules book club where you bring whatever you're reading to a round of interested listeners. You are welcome to come and be a listener, too. Twelve people shared the following 13 titles in February. Please join us at the next Lit Salon on Wednesday, March 11 at 4:30pm. Check lopezlibrary.org or email Beth for current information.
|
|
|
|
The Tobacconist
by Robert Seethaler
From The Man Booker International Prize finalist Robert Seethaler comes a tender, heartbreaking story of one young man and his friendship with Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna.Seventeen-year-old Franz Huchel journeys to Vienna to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship. When Franz falls desperately in love with the music hall dancer Anezka, he seeks advice from the renowned psychoanalyst, who admits that the female sex is as big a mystery to him as it is to Franz.As political and social conditions in Austria dramatically worsen with the Nazis' arrival in Vienna, Franz, Freud, and Anezka are swept into the maelstrom of events. Each has a big decision to make: to stay or to flee?
|
|
|
|
The Poetry of Car Mechanics
by Heidi E. y. Stemple
In this powerful middle-grade novel-in-verse, Dylan seeks solace through birdwatching and poetry in the woods behind his grandfather's auto shop--but when he rescues an injured hawk, he must learn to confront the broken parts in himself, too.15-year-old Dylan has always felt like an outsider in his small town. Isolated when he was younger as the result of his unpredictable, now absent mother and feeling like a disappointment to his grandfather who has stepped in to raise him, Dylan finds relief in the woods behind his grandfather's auto shop. Amidst the cool quiet of the trees, Dylan thrives on bird watching and writing poetry. But one afternoon after spotting an injured hawk, Dylan finds himself pushing out of his comfort zone to track down help for the bird--and ends up rescuing a part of himself in the process. In this luminous middle-grade novel-in-verse on navigating the lonely tumult of self-discovery amid complicated family history, Dylan relays his story with bracing emotional clarity.
|
|
Boy from the North Country
by Sam Sussman
When Evan, twenty-six, is suddenly called home from his life abroad to the secluded farmhouse where he was raised by his mother, June, there is so much he does not yet know. He doesn't know his mother is dying. He still doesn't know the identity of his biological father or the elusive story of his mother's creatively intense, emotionally turbulent romance with Bob Dylan, whom Evan reveres as an artist and whom strangers have long insisted he resembles. He doesn't know the secrets of his mother's life before he was born or what drove her to leave New York City for a completely different existence.--
|
|
|
|
|
The mighty red : a novel
by Louise Erdrich
A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award—winning author tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.
|
|
The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything: How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World
by Peter Brannen
How carbon dioxide made planet Earth, shaped human history, and now holds our future in the balance. Every year, we are dangerously warping the climate by putting gigantic amounts of carbon dioxide into the air But CO2 isn't merely the by-product of burning fossil fuels--it is also fundamental to how our planet works. All life is ultimately made from CO2, and it has kept Earth bizarrely habitable for hundreds of millions of years. In short, it is the most important substance on Earth. But how is it that CO2 is as essential to life on Earth as it is capable of destroying it?--Provided by publisher.
|
|
|
|
|
Coded Justice: A Thriller
by Stacey Abrams
Avery Keene is back! The fan-favorite former Supreme Court clerk has finally gone out on her own, securing a prestigious position at a high-end law firm in Washington, D.C., where she is about to earn real money and get her life in order after a tumultuous run working as a clerk on the Supreme Court. With her reputation preceding her, Avery is quickly tasked at her new job with becoming a corporate internal investigator. Her new client is Camasca-a mega-tech firm that's on the forefront of developing a new integrated AI system poised to revolutionize the medical industry, particularly by delivering vastly improved health care to veterans. The AI potential is breathtaking, but some disturbing anomalies have plagued Camasca in early testing-including the mysterious death of a Camasca engineer. Avery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, find themselves on a journey to determine whether the anomalies are mere technical glitches, or something much more concerning. Full of twists, behind-the-scenes financial machinations, and the continued blossoming of Avery and her vibrant cast of friends, Coded Justice finds Stacey Abrams' riveting series to be in full swing--
BOOK 3 IN THE SERIES (#1 is While Justice Sleeps; #2 is Rogue Justice)
|
|
Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
by Jane Goodall
From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a poignant memoir about her spiritual epiphany and an appeal for why everyone can find a reason for hope. Dr. Jane Goodall's revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe preserve forever altered the very, definition of humanity. Now, in a poignant and insightful memoir, Jane Goodall explores her extraordinary life and personal spiritual odyssey, with observations as profound as the knowledge she has brought back from the forest.
|
|
|
The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times
by Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams explore one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better world, the book touches on vital questions, including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope in our children? What is the relationship between hope and action? While discussing the experiences that shaped her discoveries and beliefs, Jane tells the story of how she became a messenger of hope, from living through World War II to her years in Gombe to realizing she had to leave the forest to travel the world in her role as an advocate for environmental justice.
|
|
|
|
|
Crow Talk
by Eileen Garvin
Nationally bestselling author of The Music of Bees Eileen Garvin returns with a moving story of hope, healing, and unexpected friendship set amidst the wild natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Frankie O'Neill and Anne Ryan would seem to have nothing in common. Frankie is a lonely ornithologist struggling to salvage her dissertation on the spotted owl following a rift with her advisor. Anne is an Irish musician far from home and family, raising her five-year-old son, Aiden, who refuses to speak. At Beauty Bay, a community of summer homes nestled on the shores of June Lake, in the remote foothills of Mount Adams, it's off-season with most houses shuttered for the fall. But Frankie, adrift, returns to the rundown caretaker's cottage that has been in the hardworking O'Neill family for generations--a beloved place and a constant reminder of the family she has lost. And Anne, in the wake of a tragedy that has disrupted her career and silenced her music, has fled to the neighboring house, a showy summer home owned by her husband's wealthy family. When Frankie finds an injured baby crow in the forest, little does she realize that the charming bird will bring all three lost souls--Frankie, Anne, and Aiden--together on a journey toward hope, healing, and rediscovering joy. Crow Talk is an achingly beautiful story of love, grief, friendship, and the healing power of nature in the darkest of times.
|
|
Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life
by Anna Funder
Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, award-winning writer Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own. When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it's a revelation. Eileen O'Shaughnessy's literary brilliance shaped Orwell's work and her practical common sense saved his life. But why--and how--was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer--and what it is to be a wife--
|
|
|
|
|
The painted veil
by Somerset Maugham
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.
|
|
The Man in Black: And Other Stories
by Elly Griffiths
From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway mysteries, an eclectic ... collection of short stories featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love--
|
|
|
|
Lopez Island Library 2225 Fisherman Bay Rd Lopez Island, Washington 98261 360-468-2265www.lopezlibrary.org |
|
|
|