Bill Levin suggested this book of poetry by Seamus Heaney. It’s rare that we read poetry as a book club and Bill had the insight and knowledge of the author to pull it off. Each of us nine members selected one poem from this collection to read aloud and discuss. We gathered around the outdoor…
Ceremonial time is the moment when past, present, and future can be perceived simultaneously. Usually experienced only during ancient dances or rituals, this escape from time is the theme of this book, which traces the life on a single spot in New England from the last ice age through years of Indians, shamans, and bears,…
Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt recounts returning for one last stay with his wife and children in this stunning memoir that was a National Book Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Author…
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Author Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize winning author…
Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. Author Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction…
The former French colony of Acadia—permanently renamed Nova Scotia by the British when they began an ambitious occupation of the territory in 1710—witnessed one of the bitterest struggles in the British empire. Author Geoffrey Plank is Professor of Early Modern History at University of East Anglia. He previously taught at the University of Cincinnati.
A warm, vivid portrait of the harsh West Virginia mining town of his youth, evoking a time of innocence and promise, when anything was possible, even in a company town that swallowed its men alive. Author Homer Hickam is the best-selling author of the “Coalwood” series of memoirs, the “Josh Thurlow” series of World War…
Deception—the lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Author Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki, and was an illustrator and political cartoonist for the left-leaning, anti-Fascist magazine Garm. She created a long-running comic strip and a series of children’s books…
Haunting, harrowing, moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. Author Rick Bragg (1959) is an American journalist and…
Laurence Wylie’s remarkably warm and human account of life in the rural French village he calls Peyrane vividly depicts the villagers themselves within the framework of a systematic description of their culture. Since 1950, when Wylie began his study of Peyrane, to which he has returned on many occasions since, France has become a primarily…
