New Year, New Reading

Here are the books we will be reading in the first few months of 2018. All meetings will be held in the library's Sivess room at 7pm. Feel free to join us for any or all of these discussions!

January 18: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Summary: Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, "Hidden Figures" follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future. [NONFICTION]

Year Published: 2016

Length: 346 pages

February 15: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

Summary: When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants--otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. [NONFICTION]

Year Published: 2007

Length: 368 pages

March 15: All the Stars in the Heavens by Adriana Trigiani

Summary: The movie business is booming in 1935 when twenty-one-year-old Loretta Young meets thirty-four-year-old Clark Gable on the set of The Call of the Wild. Though he's already married, Gable falls for the stunning and vivacious young actress instantly. Far from the glittering lights of Hollywood, Sister Alda Ducci has been forced to leave her convent and begin a new journey that leads her to Loretta. Becoming Miss Young's secretary, the innocent and pious young Alda must navigate the wild terrain of Hollywood with fierce determination and a moral code that derives from her Italian roots. Over the course of decades, she and Loretta encounter scandal and adventure, choose love and passion, and forge an enduring bond of love and loyalty that will be put to the test when they eventually face the greatest obstacle of their lives.

Year Published: 2015

Length: 453 pages

April 19:  Choose Your Own! Siblings Biographies

Once again, we'll be having a book discussion in which each group member chooses her or his own book to read and reports back to the group on it. In honor of National Siblings Day in April, the book should be a biography about siblings. You are free to choose any book you'd like, but here are some examples you could use if you wish.

• The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests To The Modern World by Jack Zipes 
• Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend by Ted Yeatman
• The Jacksons Legacy by Fred Bronson
• Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers by Simon Louvish
• The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy by Jean Kennedy Smith
• Sisters: The Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine by Charles Higham
• Swing It!: The Andrews Sisters Story by John Sforza
• The Wright Brothers by David McCullough