This book discussion group began in 1996 as the "Books of the Century" book discussion group, choosing books from the New York Public Library's Books of the Century exhibit and book.  Beginning in the Fall of 2000, the group expanded its choices.  Participants are expected to read at least part of the selected works.  The library will help locate copies of the books.  There is no fee, but please register to reserve your space.

Book discussions occur from 7-8:30 pm on the first Thursday of every month,  October through May (please note the slightly different time!).  Call 215-723-9109 x1 for more information.  

October 6, 2011: Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (2009)

A "sidequel" to Oryx and Crake.  "The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin...Adam One, the kindly leader of God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life - has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it.  Now ithas occurred, obliterating most human life." (Amazon.com) (Fiction)

November 3:  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2010).

This revisionist novel about Thomas Cromwell portrays him as a wise minister and a decent man.  Mantel is "interested in the question of good and evil as it applies to people who wield great power," which  means "anguish, exultation, deals, spies, decapitations, and fabulous clothes."  Wolf Hall won the Man Booker Prize, the U.K.'s most valued literary award  (New Yorker) (Fiction)

"With long-established newspapers passing from the scene and many others on life support, it's the perfect time for a satiric look at the business."  This "sly novel-in-stories" is about "the travails of the staff struggling to keep a small English-language paper afloat in Rome while wrestling with their messy personal lives."  (BookPage 4/10)  (Fiction) 

January 5, 2012: Waiting for Snow in Havana, by Carlos Eire (2003).

"Noted religion scholar Carlos Eire's idyllic and privileged childhood in Havana came to an end in the wake of Castro's revolution.  In this memoir, he reveals an exotic, magical Cuba and an eccentric family...In 1962, Carlos Eire's world changed forever when he and his brother were among the 14,000 children airlifted off the island, their parents left behind.  In chronicling his life before and after his arrival in America, Mr. Eire's personal story is also a meditation on loss and suffering, redemption and rebirth."  (www.nationalbook.org) (Non-fiction) 

February 2: American Pastoral, by Philip Roth (1997). 

"A different side of Roth has...emerged.  His protagonist here is the exact opposite of what we have come to expect in our Roth heroes.  Seymour "Swede" Levov is a high school sports legend who has grown up to embody almost every aspect of the American dream...almost a poster boy for happy and uncomplicated Jewish assimilation into the mainstream of American life.  The book is narrated by Roth's most famous character outside of Alexander Portnoy, Nathan Zucherman, a writer and fictional alter ego for Philip Roth." (www.thenewcanon.com)  (Fiction)

March 1: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot (2009)

"From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks's cervix.  Even before killing Lacks in 1951, they took on a life of their own.  Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins - the first human cells ever to do so.  heLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world.  Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospital's "colored" ward.  (New York Times Book Review)  (Non-fiction)

April 5: Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl (1962).

This is an account psychotherapist Frankl wrote of his experiences in Nazi death camps during World War II.  Frankl ponders "the mystery of transcendent experience amid extreme suffering, and explores the true nature of human moral freedom."  (www.pbs.org)  (Non-fiction)

May 3:    The evolution of Bruno Littlemore, by Benjamin Hale (2010). 

Imagine a future in which animals are accorded the same rights as humans, a society in which cattle ranchers, research scientists and pet owners are regarded with antipathy we now reserve for eugenicists and slave traders.  This interspecies coming-of-age story - in which a chimpanzee acquires language and attempts to make his way through human society - offers a touching and quirky story of identity formation, a brash, glittering, engaging yarn that pushes past opposable thumbs, universal grammar and bipedal ambulation to the pulsing heart of our fair species. (excerpted from SFGate.com)(Fiction)