Gearing up for another season of good reading at the Atwater Library! Here are the books and the dates for the 2019-2020 season: all the books are in the library, so start reading! (Of course, we have one more session set for Wednesday, June 12 when we'll talk about Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. The discussions are open to anyone.)
2019
Sept 11
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
It is 1945, and 14-year-old Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, are apparently abandoned by their parents, left in the care of an enigmatic figure named The Moth. They suspect he might be a criminal, and grow both more convinced and less concerned as they get to know his eccentric crew of friends: men and women with a shared history, all of whom seem determined now to protect, and educate (in rather unusual ways) Rachel and Nathaniel. But are they really what and who they claim to be?
Oct. 9
Small Country by Gaêl Faye
Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana, is something close to paradise. But dark clouds are gathering over this small country, and soon their peaceful existence will shatter when Burundi, and neighboring Rwanda, are brutally hit by civil war and genocide.
Nov. 13
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth
Dec. 11
MILKMAN Anna Burns
In Northern Ireland during the Troubles of the 1970s, an unnamed narrator finds herself targeted by a high-ranking dissident known as Milkman. The 2018 Man Booker Prize winner.
2020
Feb. 12
Songs for the Cold of Heart by Éric Dupont (Peter McCambridge, translator)
A yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivière-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome and beyond. This is the story of a century — long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs and unforgettable characters — with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca. (Originally published as La fiancée américaine.)
March 18
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.
April 8
The Break by Katerena Vermette
When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house — she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.
May 13
Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield - the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion
June 10
American War by Omar El Akkad
In the not too distant future, the United States is again at war with itself. Fossil fuels, which have decimated the environment, are banned, but the states rich in them refuse to comply and thus break away from the union, resulting in biological warfare, drones as killing machines, and state fighting against state.
P.S. The painting is by Gotthard Kuehl and done in 1894.
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