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2009 - 2010
The Signal
by Ron Carlson
Mack and Vonnie are taking their 10th fishing trip into the Wyoming backcountry, but this year it’s not the happy, carefree expedition of previous years. This trip will be their last one, because Vonnie has divorced Mack. Although some of the old camaraderie is still there, and they share a deep love of the wilderness, there are also recriminations and apologies to be aired, and Mack has time to consider what their lives apart from each other will be like. He remembers their courtship and the good times together, and regrets his lying and mistakes. Also troubling his conscience is the arrangement he’s made with a shady businessman in an attempt to save his family’s ranch.
Questions
The Well and the Mine
by Gin Phillips
The folks of Carbon Hill, Alabama, are getting by the best they can, what with the Depression and the dwindling coal seams in the mine that employs most of their men. Although the town has a “colored,” population, some of whom work in the mine, segregation is strictly observed. President Roosevelt’s safety net has helped the town somewhat, bringing paved roads and a new high school. The Moores are better off than many families, because they have some land and can grow food and cotton as a cash crop. Albert, the father, works long hours in the mine and loves John Lewis. The children don’t resent having to wear shoes patched with cardboard, because they are loved and cared for by their parents and relatives, from whom they learn about what’s important in life - fairness, generosity and dignity.
Questions
Let the Great World Spin
by Colum McCann
On a late summer morning in 1974 activity in the streets of lower Manhattan stops as people stare upward at a figure poised on one of the Twin Towers. The figure seems to suddenly launch into space, but instead of falling, remains suspended on a wire, running, dancing, leaping. This image of the fearless performer is the background for the stories of people who saw him or heard about his audacious “artistic crime of the century.” Among them are a group of mothers of sons killed in Vietnam, an Irish monk working among prostitutes in the Bronx, a young artist involved in a hit-and-run accident, and the judge who must determine whether the tightrope walker has committed a crime. How will their lives intersect? McCann’s novel won the National Book Award in 2009.
Questions
Land of Marvels
by Barry Unsworth
March 1914. The world is running out of time as war between Britain and Germany seems inevitable. John Somerville is running out of time and the funds he needs to complete his archaeological excavation of Tell Erdeck in Mesopotamia, graveyard of empires. Somerville is cautiously elated when his workers uncover artifacts hinting that the site may be more important than even he believed. His appeal for assistance to the British ambassador in Constantinople is complicated by the fact that geologists, suspecting the presence of oil deposits, are surveying the area near the Tell. To add to his worries, the Arab man he has hired as a spy informs him that a railway line being built by German engineers will cut right through his site.
Questions
Père Goriot
by Honoré de Balzac
Paris in 1819 is a labyrinth, where social climbing and greed hold sway. Human relationships suffer as children neglect their parents, fathers disown their daughters and men and women lie, cheat and steal to get ahead. Monsieur Goriot, a retired manufacturer, chooses to live in a shabby Paris boardinghouse and give what remains of his wealth to his daughters so they can live in mansions, drive fancy coaches and wear fine clothes. He befriends a fellow boarder, a young law student named Rastignac, who uses their relationship to advance his personal ambition.
Questions
Deaf Sentence
by David Lodge
“Deafness is comic, as blindness is tragic,” declares retired university professor Desmond Bates, who has lost much of his hearing. Ironically, as a teacher of linguistics, he made his career on the study of language. Now when people speak to him he hears only gibberish. His wife is annoyed at his reluctance to participate in social events, his father’s health and mental state are declining, and an obnoxious American graduate student has bullied him into being her thesis advisor. Can Desmond keep his equanimity? Lodge writes with humor about the trials and tribulations of an ordinary man.
Questions
The End of Manners
by Francesca Marciano
Maria photographs food. She started as a photojournalist, but the photo that made her famous also traumatized her and made her switch her career to snapping gorgeous pictures of inanimate objects. She reluctantly agrees to take an assignment in Afghanistan, where she'll take pictures for a story about young Afghan women who set themselves on fire to avoid forced marriages. Imo Glass, the British journalist who's writing the story, is a domineering personality, and Maria follows her meekly into villages where they are sometimes welcomed, but more often met with suspicion.
Questions
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
Miss Jean Brodie, an eccentric and charismatic teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, is in her prime. That’s one of the declarations she makes to the girls she has chosen to be in her “set”. She aims to educate them in the ways of the world and mold them to her ideas. Miss Mackay, the headmistress, would love to rid her school of the unorthodox Miss Brodie but is unable to find evidence compelling enough to justify her dismissal. Miss Brodie continues to take her girls to tea and confide in them. Little does she know that one of them will betray her.
Questions
Telex from Cuba
by Rachel Kushner
Everly Lederer and KC Stites grow up among the American community in Cuba’s Oriente Province where their fathers and their co-workers control the domains of the vast holdings – 300,000 acres of sugarcane – of United Fruit and the Nicaro nickel mine. Everly and KC’s privileged life is threatened by rumblings of revolution brewing in the mountains, led by the two Castro brothers, sons of a wealthy landowner. The wide-ranging cast of characters includes native Cubans, immigrant workers brought from Jamaica and Haiti to work in the cane fields, Americans who run the companies and European expatriates. This is a moving story of love, loss, identity, illusion, the beauty of nature and its decay, how human beings deform nature and love.
Questions
List of Characters
Book website
National Book Awards
Fieldwork
by Mischa Berlonski
Living in Thailand with his teacher girlfriend, American journalist Mischa Berlonski hears about the suicide of a young anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, who killed herself in prison where she was serving a 50-year sentence for the murder of American missionary David Walker. Mischa’s journalistic curiosity is piqued. He seeks out Martiya’s friends and colleagues to learn about her years in grad school and her life studying the people of the Dyalo hill-tribe. He spends time with David’s family. His curiosity gradually turns into an obsession. How did Martiya’s and David’s lives intersect? Why was she driven to murder the gentle young man?
Questions
Titles Selected by Suzanne Fisher, Librarian
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