Adult Book Discussion Group

Corporate Memphis-style drawing of a group of adults sitting around a coffee table conversing

Join us monthly in the Library Community Room for an hour of lively book discussion. Our book discussion group is an informal gathering of adults with a respectful, congenial, and inquisitive atmosphere.

At the start of the meeting, each member presents their observations and overall impression of the book. If they wish, they can rate the book from zero to five, with five being the highest and most favorable rating. Afterwards, as time allows, members engage in a more thorough and wide-ranging discussion of the book.

Everyone is given an opportunity to participate in the discussion; however, participation is not a requirement. Listeners are welcome!

Adult Book Discussion Group takes place in the Library Community Room at 7:00 PM on the first Thursday of each month unless otherwise noted.

Upcoming book to be discussed

Cover of Crow Talk showing sole person in boat on lake, mountain behind shore, birds in sky

February 6

Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin

" Ornithology grad student Frankie O'Neill retreats to her family's remote lakeside cabin, seeking solitude and guidance in the aftermath of her father's death and the abrupt dissolution of her studies. There are few cottages there, and most should be unoccupied, a fact Frankie knows since her father, Jack, was caretaker for those wealthy Seattle residents who "roughed it" for short summer respites. But Frankie's reverie is shattered when a young couple arrives with their precocious son. She wants to keep her distance, but that becomes difficult once five-year-old Aiden runs away from his parents and takes refuge in Frankie's cottage. Aiden's recent behavioral difficulties have frustrated his family, and his mother, Irish ex-pat musician Anne, interprets Aiden's silence and withdrawal as a rebuke for the emotional distance she imposed after her dearest friend's death. When Frankie rescues an injured baby crow, the bird's rehabilitation provides the catalyst for a journey of restoration for herself, Aiden, and Anne. With great compassion and keen appreciation, Garvin (The Music of Bees, 2021) gently applies the wisdom found in this simple act of caring to help a marriage mend, a friendship blossom, and a child heal. A stunning affirmation of nature's power to soothe and rejuvenate. " Starred review, (2024) Booklist.

Previous Discussions

January 2

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

"In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional acuity, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most acclaimed literary talents working today."

Cover of Foster, showing a woodcut-style image in black, white, and shades of blue of a building against a mountain backgroun

December 5

Foster by Claire Keegan

"It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household-where everything is so well tended to-and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in The New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition."

November 21

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

"The long-awaited, daring, and magnificent novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career with the Ziegfeld Follies, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a nightclub, she chances to meet Dexter Styles again, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have vanished. Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan's first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a spectacular novel by one of the greatest writers of our time."