Book Discussion Kits

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May 2008

Abani, Chris. GraceLand.
Elvis Oke, a teenage Elvis impersonator, comes of age in a violent, impoverished ghetto permeated by American popular culture in Lagos, Nigeria. Book Discussion Questions from Picador.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus.
When she visits her liberated and loving aunt, life dramatically changes for a 15-year old Nigerian girl who has grown up in sheltered privilege with a wealthy father who is politically courageous but religiously fanatic. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Bloom, Amy. Away.
Lillian Leyb, survivor of a Russian massacre, immigrates to New York in 1924. Upon learning her 3-year-old daughter may still be alive, she journeys across North America through the Yukon wilderness and over the Bering Strait to find her. Book Discussion Questions from BookBrowse.

Edwards, Kim. The Secrets of a Fire King.
This collection of stories spans generations and continents, covering people living on the edges of society, including a fire eater, a juggler, an Asian war bride living in upstate New York, and a trapeze artist. Book Discussion Questions from KET TV.

Franklin, Ariana. City of Shadows.
A murder mystery set in pre-Nazi era Berlin centers on the claim of Anna Anderson that she is Anastasia, the surviving daughter of the massacre of the last Russian tsar's family. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

McEwan, Ian. On Chesil Beach.
The trauma of a wedding night spent on the Dorset Coast centers on the couple's fears about sex and their inability to discuss them. Book Discussion Questions from BookBrowse.

Moriarty, Laura. The Center of Everything.
Evelyn, the daughter of a warm, loving, but immature and impetuous single mother in precarious financial circumstances, faces the trials of adolescence. Book Discussion Questions from Hyperion.

Picoult, Jodi. Nineteen Minutes.
Picoult explores a small town high school shooting from various angles: the causes, effects, emotions, and moral issues involved. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return.
Marjane continues her graphic novel memoir. As a teen she leaves war torn Iran for Vienna where she tries dating and recreational drugs. Readjustment to a patriarchal, fundamentalist society follows, as she returns to her homeland. Book Discussion Questions from Random House.

April 2008

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun.
The story of the Biafran War (1967-1970) along with family, love, racial, ethnic and class conflicts in Nigeria is told from the perspectives of a 13-year old houseboy, the daughter of a wealthy, well-connected Igbo family, and a British ex-patriot. Book Discussion Questions from BookBrowse.

Bohjalian, Chris. The Double Bind.
A literary thriller with a tricky, intriguing premise and a fictional backdrop from The Great Gatsby begins with the attempted rape and murder of a young woman bicyclist on a rural Vermont road and involves the mysterious past of a homeless man. Book Discussion Questions from the author.

Bryson, Bill. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
Bryson's own childhood in 1950s America is the focus this time. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

Crombie, Deborah. A Share in Death.
Scotland Yard’s Duncan Kincaid’s Yorkshire vacation is ruined when he stumbles upon a murder. A country house whodunit. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

Nemirovsky, Irene. Suite Francaise.
The first two parts of an epic drama of the Nazi occupation of France written by a Russian Jewish refugee who lived in France and died in Auschwitz in 1942. This novel was rediscovered and published over 60 years after her death. Book Discussion Questions from BookBrowse.

Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day.
Laugh out loud essays by NPR commentator on his antic family and his life in New York and Paris. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

January 2008

Bloom, Stephen. Postville.
The author, a secular Jew and journalism professor, explores his own identity as a Jew and the culture clash that erupts in a nearby Iowa town when a Lubavitch group from Brooklyn establishes a Kosher slaughterhouse there. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

McCall Smith, Alexander. The Tears of the Giraffe.
The further adventures of Precious Ramotswe, the cunning, insightful head of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Wood, Patricia. The Lottery.
Perry Crandall (IQ 76) narrates his life after the death of his Gran, who raised him after his parents abandoned him. When he wins a $12 million lottery, his avaricious family schemes to appropriate his prize. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

November 2007

Albom, Mitch. For One More Day.
Albom explores the idea of having one more day to relive with someone you love in this novel. Here, alcoholic ex-baseball star Chick encounters his dead mother after his attempted suicide. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupChoices.

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.
Interwoven stories of four Latina sisters chronicling their assimilation into the United States and their visits back to the Dominican Republic. Book Discussion Questions from Tacoma PL.

Cather, Willa. My Antonia.
Written in 1918, this enduring classic tells the story of Bohemian immigrant to Nebraska Antonia through the eyes of her orphaned friend Jim. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Doig, Ivan. Dancing at the Rascal Fair.
Part immigrant saga, part Western, part romance, the McCaskill family trilogy begins with the arrival of the Scotsman Angus McCaskill to Montana in 1889. Book Discussion Questions from Ivan Doig.

Frazier, Charles. Thirteen Moons.
An epic set in the wilderness of 19th century North Carolina, this novel follows life of a young Will, a trading store worker, who befriends the local Cherokee Indians, then lives to see and recount their forcible removal. Book Discussion Questions from About.com.

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love.
A memoir of a year-long journey of soul searching and self discovery through the sensual delight in Italy; meditation in India; and love in Indonesia. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Hosseini, Khaled. A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Through three decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, two wives of the same man become the closest of friends, and the reader gets a view into difficult lives they live. Book Discussion Questions from Penguin Putnam.

Jones, Edward. The Known World.
In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel, a black slave owner dies, and his plantation begins to fall apart. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Larson, Erik. Isaac's Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.
An account of the 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas and killed 6,000 people. Larson uses personal papers, letters, newspapers and government archives as the source material for this engrossing tale. Book Discussion Questions from MPL.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road.
A post-apocalyptic journey of a father and a son through a ravaged landscape. Book Discussion Questions from ReadingGroupGuides.

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
The moral and ecological issues of the food system are traced through four meals, one from McDonald's, one prepared from Whole Foods products, one prepared from products from a small, utopian Virginia farm, and the last from foraged and hunted food. Book Discussion Questions from Sierra Club.

Tolan, Sandy. Lemon Tree.
The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is traced through the personal histories of two who occupied the same house at separate times: Dalia, a woman whose family of Bulgarian Jews immigrated to Israel in 1948, and Bashir, a man whose family was driven out of Palestine. Book Discussion Questions from BloomsburyUSA.