|
|
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 17 titles in April. Please join us at the next Lit Salon on Wednesday, May 13 at 4:30pm. Check lopezlibrary.org or email Beth for current information. |
|
|
|
The Braid
by Helen Frost
Two sisters, Jeannie and Sarah, tell their separate yet tightly interwoven stories in alternating narrative poems. Each sister - Jeannie, who leaves Scotland during the Highland Clearances with her father, mother, and the younger children, and Sarah, who hides so she can stay behind with her grandmother - carries a length of the other's hair braided with her own. The braid binds them together when they are worlds apart and reminds them of who they used to be before they were evicted from the Western Isles, where their family had lived for many generations. The award-winning poet Helen Frost eloquently twists strand over strand of language, braiding the words at the edges of the poems to bring new poetic forms to life while intertwining the destinies of two young girls and the people who cross their paths in this unforgettable novel. An author's note describes the inventive poetic form in detail.
|
|
|
|
The Correspondent
by Virginia Evans
Sybil is seventy-three years old, in the winter of her life. Sybil has always made sense of the world through writing letters and through this epistolary novel we see how she comes to terms with her past and present and learns forgiveness--
|
|
Man's Search for Meaning
by Viktor E. Frankl
As relevant today as it was when it was first published, Man's Search for Meaning is a book for finding strength and purpose in times of great despair.This is a book I reread a lot ... it gives me hope ... it gives me a sense of strength.--Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNNViktor E. Frankl was a medical doctor at a psychiatric hospital in 1942 when he became a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps in World War II. In 1946, he published this book about his camp experiences and a method of psychotherapy he developed. Forty-five years later, it was still named one of the most influential books in the United States.Part One describes his three years in four Nazi concentration camps, which took the lives of his wife, father, mother, and brother. He closely observed inmates' reactions to their situation, as well as how survivors came to terms with their liberation. Part Two, introducing logotherapy, is an academic discussion of the psychological reactions experienced by all inmates to one degree or another. It solidified Frankl's early theory that humanity's primary motivational force is finding meaning in one's life. In Germany, titled Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, or A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp, its title in the first English translation was From Death-Camp to Existentialism. As of 2022, this book has sold 16 million copies and been published in 52 languages.
|
|
|
|
|
The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow
by Leah Weiss
An impressive blend of history, folklore, and imagination. -Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling authorAn outsider to the Carolina hills inherits a gift that could change everything for her village on the verge of dying, from the author NPR said writes with a deep knowledge of the enduring myths of Appalachia...vividly portraying real people and sorrows.Welcome to Baines Creek, a humble hamlet hidden deep in Appalachia, where the last one-room schoolhouse in North Carolina is on the brink of closing. It's summer 1980, and teacher Kate Shaw has lived in Baines Creek for ten years. A skeptic at heart, she rejects mountain superstition and Appalachian folklore, much to the disappointment of Birdie Rocas, a powerful and reclusive witch with a trove of secrets. Yet, as Kate prepares to leave, a sudden death, a shocking request, and a legacy that spans centuries throw her into a world that overwhelms her.Enter Lydia Brown, a psychic with a curious birthmark whose visions stopped when she needed them most. Grief-stricken without her gift, and desperate for spiritual guidance, she travels to Baines Creek in search of Birdie and the answers she might provide. The third novel by acclaimed author Leah Weiss, The Creek, The Crone, and the Crow is the tale of a powerful crone, two women cut from the cloth of loss, and a secret sisterhood of empowerment that may be the key to healing them all.
|
|
|
|
Wildwood
by Colin Meloy
When her baby brother is kidnapped by crows, Prue McKeel begins an adventure that takes her and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peace-loving mystics and powerful figures with the darkest intentions.
FIRST IN A TRILOGY:
#2 - Under Wildwood
#3 - Wildwood Imperium
|
|
Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
by Dennis Duncan
Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and--of course--indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart--and we have been for eight hundred years.
|
|
|
|
|
The Wall: (Intimacy) and Other Stories
by Jean-Paul Sartre
'The Wall', the lead story in this collection, introduces three political prisoners on the night prior to their execution. Through the gaze of an impartial doctor--seemingly there for the men's solace--their mental descent is charted in exquisite, often harrowing detail. And as the morning draws inexorably closer, the men cross the psychological wall between life and death, long before the first shot rings out. This brilliant snapshot of life in anguish is the perfect introduction to a collection of stories where the neurosis of the modern world is mirrored in the lives of the people that inhabit it.
|
|
Broken Country
by Clare Leslie Hall
Stirring and mysterious...fires directly at the human heart and hits the mark. --Delia Owens, New York Times bestselling author of Where the Crawdads Sing A love triangle unearths dangerous, deadly secrets from the past in this thrilling tale perfect for fans of The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing. The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him. Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth's brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn't realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager--the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident. As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel's life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become. A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.
|
|
|
|
|
Dele Weds Destiny
by Tomi Obaro
The story of three once-inseparable college friends in Nigeria who reunite in Lagos for the first time in thirty years--a sparkling novel about the extraordinary resilience of female friendship. A story rendered with so much heart. --Taylor Jenkins Reid, best-selling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined; Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother's smothering and needy love; Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father's first two wives after her mother's death in childbirth. Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the novel, the reader learns about their loves and losses. How Funmi stole Zainab's boyfriend and became pregnant, only to have an abortion and lose the boyfriend to police violence. How Enitan was seduced by an American Peace Corps volunteer, the only one who ever really saw her, but is culturally so different from him--a Connecticut WASP--that raising their daughter together put them at odds. How Zainab fell in love with her teacher, a friend of her father's, and ruptured her relationship with her father to have him. Now, some thirty years later, the three women are reunited for the first time, in Lagos. The occasion: Funmi's daughter, Destiny, is getting married. Enitan brings her American daughter, Remi. Zainab travels by bus, nervously leaving her ailing husband in the care of their son. Funmi, hosting the weekend with her wealthy husband, wants everything to go perfectly. But as the big day approaches, it becomes clear that something is not right. As the novel builds powerfully, the complexities of the mothers' friendship--and the private wisdom each has earned--come to bear on a riveting, heartrending moment of decision. Dele Weds Destiny is a sensational debut from a dazzling new voice in contemporary fiction.
|
|
The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus
by Amy-Jill Levine
In The Misunderstood Jew, scholar Amy-Jill Levine helps Christians and Jews understand the Jewishness of Jesus so that their appreciation of him deepens and a greater interfaith dialogue can take place. Levine's humor and informed truth-telling provokes honest conversation and debate about how Christians and Jews should understand Jesus, the New Testament, and each other.
|
|
|
|
|
#1 - La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust)
by Philip Pullman
Two young people and their daemons, with everything at stake, find themselves at the center of a terrifying manhunt. In their care is a tiny child called Lyra Belacqua, and in that child lies the fate of the future. As the waters rise around them, powerful adversaries conspire for mastery of Dust: salvation to some, the source of infinite corruption to others. Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust - La Belle Sauvage is set twelve years before the epic His Dark Materials trilogy. Bryony Lavery's stage adaptation was first performed at the Bridge Theatre, London, in December 2021, directed by Nicholas Hytner, whose groundbreaking production of His Dark Materials was a critical and commercial success at the National Theatre.
The 6 books are numbered in story sequence, not publication order.
|
|
#2 - The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials)
by Philip Pullman
In a landmark epic of fantasy and storytelling, Philip Pullman invites readers into a world as convincing and thoroughly realized as Narnia, Earthsea, or Redwall. Here lives an orphaned ward named Lyra Belacqua, whose carefree life among the scholars at Oxford's Jordan College is shattered by the arrival of two powerful visitors. First, her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, appears with evidence of mystery and danger in the far North, including photographs of a mysterious celestial phenomenon called Dust and the dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora Borealis that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. He leaves Lyra in the care of Mrs. Coulter, an enigmatic scholar and explorer who offers to give Lyra the attention her uncle has long refused her. In this multilayered narrative, however, nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing--victims of so-called Gobblers--and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.
|
|
|
|
|
#3 - The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials)
by Philip Pullman
Lyra and her daemon return as she and 12-year-old Will Parry are in a desperate flight for Will's life. They are drawn closer to Will's father and to the Subtle Knife, a deadly, magical, ancient tool that cuts windows between worlds. Through it all, the pair are drawn deeper and deeper into a fierce battle they may not survive.
|
|
#4 - The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials)
by Philip Pullman
"The Amber Spyglass brings the intrigue of "The Golden Compass and "The Subtle Knife to a heart-stopping end, marking the final volume of His Dark Materials as the most powerful of the trilogy.
Along with the return of Lyra, Will, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, Dr. Mary Malone, and Iorek Byrnison the armored bear, come a host of new characters: the Mulefa, mysterious wheeled creatures with the power to see Dust; Gallivespian Lord Roke, a hand-high spymaster to Lord Asriel; and Metatron, a fierce and mighty angel. So, too, come startling revelations: the painful price Lyra must pay to walk through the land of the dead, the haunting power of Dr. Malone's amber spyglass, and the names of who will live--and who will die--for love. And all the while, war rages with the Kingdom of Heaven, a brutal battle that--in its shocking outcome--will uncover the secret of Dust. Philip Pullman deftly brings the cliff-hangers and mysteries of His Dark Materials to an earthshattering conclusion--and confirms his fantasy trilogy as an undoubted and enduring classic.
|
|
|
|
|
#5 - The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust)
by Philip Pullman
The #1 New York Times Bestseller! Return to the world of His Dark Materials--now an HBO original series starring Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, and Lin-Manuel Miranda--in the second volume of Philip Pullman's new bestselling masterwork The Book of Dust. The windows between the many worlds have been sealed and the momentous adventures of Lyra Silvertongue's youth are long behind her--or so she thought. Lyra is now a twenty-year-old undergraduate at St. Sophia's College and intrigue is swirling around her once more. Her daemon Pantalaimon is witness to a brutal murder, and the dying man entrusts them with secrets that carry echoes from their past. The more Lyra is drawn into these mysteries, the less she is sure of. Even the events of her own past come into question when she learns of Malcolm Polstead's role in bringing her to Jordan College. Now Lyra and Malcolm will travel far beyond the confines of Oxford, across Europe and into the Levant, searching for a city haunted by daemons, and a desert said to hold the truth of Dust. The dangers they face will challenge everything they thought they knew about the world, and about themselves. Praise for The Book of Dust It's a stunning achievement, this universe Pullman has created and continues to build on. --The New York Times Pullman's writing is simple, unpretentious, beautiful, true. The conclusion to The Book of Dust can't come soon enough.--The Washington Post
|
|
#6 - The Rose Field (The Book of Dust)
by Philip Pullman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The breathtaking conclusion to Philip Pullman's landmark new trilogy The Book of Dust Return to the world of His Dark Materials and discover what fate has in store for Lyra, one of fantasy's most indelible heroines (The New York Times Magazine). ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Horn Book, The Boston Globe Blue Ribbon Awards List Pullman's abilities as a storyteller are stupendous, and on full display.--The Atlantic Tremendously entertaining.--Slate Lyra Silvertongue is alone in a city haunted by daemons, searching for her beloved Pan. Malcolm Polstead isn't far behind, searching for Lyra. And they are both racing toward the desert of Karamakan, following the trail of roses said to hold the secret of Dust. Their allies and enemies are converging on the mysterious red building at the heart of the desert: Marcel Delamare and the military might of the Magisterium; the radical Men from the Mountains; scientists, scholars, and spies; troops of witches and other people of the air. And awaiting them all is a previously unseen and chilling new threat that will change everything. The intertwining odysseys of Malcolm and Lyra, their journeys both internal and external, will test their limits and challenge even their most dearly held beliefs. As ever, Philip Pullman is using the language of fantasy to illuminate our world and to explore the deepest questions of what it means to be alive and awake to all the splendors and horrors around us.
|
|
|
|
Lopez Island Library
2225 Fisherman Bay Rd
Lopez Island, Washington 98261
360-468-2265www.lopezlibrary.org |
|
|
|
