| Label | Information |
|---|---|
| Dates & times |
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| Category | Book Club |
| Age Groups | Adult |
Book discussions hosted 2nd Tuesday of each month
Start time: 7:00 PM – Duration: 1 hour
Location: Wright Library’s Community Room or join online via Zoom
Join us for a relaxed, open-minded, varied discussion of this month's selection. New people are always welcome; no sign-up is required, but you can register for an email reminder.
Virtual attendance requires installing Zoom on your device (camera, microphone, and speakers or earphones required. Additional help using Zoom.
Extra copies of each month's book selection are available at the Main Desk.
Upcoming Discussions:
- July 9 : Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune
- August 13: Groundskeeping
- Past Titles
Not the Book Club for you? Learn about other Book Clubs at Wright Library.
July: Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune
July 9, 2024
About Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune by Roselle Lim
Lush and visual, chock-full of delicious recipes, Roselle Lim’s magical debut novel is about food, heritage, and finding family in the most unexpected places.
At the news of her mother’s death, Natalie Tan returns home. The two women hadn’t spoken since Natalie left in anger seven years ago, when her mother refused to support her chosen career as a chef. Natalie is shocked to discover the vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco’s Chinatown that she remembers from her childhood is fading, with businesses failing and families moving out. She’s even more surprised to learn she has inherited her grandmother’s restaurant.
The neighborhood seer reads the restaurant’s fortune in the leaves: Natalie must cook three recipes from her grandmother’s cookbook to aid her struggling neighbors before the restaurant will succeed. Unfortunately, Natalie has no desire to help them try to turn things around—she resents the local shopkeepers for leaving her alone to take care of her agoraphobic mother when she was growing up. But with the support of a surprising new friend and a budding romance, Natalie starts to realize that maybe her neighbors really have been there for her all along.
“Roselle Lim serves up a feast for the senses and the heart with this magical tale of love, loss, and redemption in San Francisco's Chinatown." - Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger
August: Groundskeeping
August 13, 2024
About Groundskeeping by Lee Cole
In the run-up to the 2016 election, Owen Callahan, an aspiring writer, moves back to Kentucky to live with his Trump-supporting uncle and grandfather. Eager to clean up his act after wasting time and potential in his early twenties, he takes a job as a groundskeeper at a small local college, in exchange for which he is permitted to take a writing course.
Here he meets Alma Hazdic, a writer in residence who seems to have everything that Owen lacks—a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma—who comes from a liberal family of Bosnian immigrants—struggles to understand Owen’s fraught relationship with family and home.
Exquisitely written; expertly crafted; dazzling in its precision, restraint, and depth of feeling, Groundskeeping is a novel of haunting power and grace from a prodigiously gifted young writer.
“Scrupulously perceptive . . . Groundskeeping is filled with close observation, detailed shading. It is an absorbing love story, but it is also an examination of class in America, and it captures with sharp insight a moment in recent history.”
—Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn
