We know how difficult it is to choose a book for your next book group meeting, and to find enough copies for all the members of your group. We've made it easier for you by collecting donated and withdrawn copies of discussible books and putting all the copies in a canvas bag. We've included discussion questions and information about each author in a folder for each collection.
There are at least 8 copies of the book in each kit. At this time we have over 400 kits for you to choose from.
Printable lists of titles are also available, without cover art, sorted by title and by author.
How can we get a kit?
Call us at 608-266-6300 and we will help you check out a kit. The kit will be checked out on the library card of the person picking them up. The person checking out the kit may choose a due date for the kit, up to 3 months from the day they pick it up. Due to high demand, please take only one or two kits at a time. Kits can be shipped to any library in Madison as well as any public library in the South Central Library System.
What if a book is lost?
If your group happens to lose a book, we ask that you replace it with another copy of the book, new or second hand, that is clean and readable.
Search our collection of kits
We Need New Names
In Bulawayo’s semiautobiographical novel, young Darling describes her chaotic but still happy childhood during Zimbabwe’s strife-filled Lost Decade. In the second half of the novel, the teenage Darling reflects on the promises and failures of America after she emigrates to Destroyedmichigan (Detroit). A work that considers what one embraces in a new culture and what can’t be left behind, We Need New Names was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Award.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Shot in the head on her way home from her Pakistan school, Malala was targeted by the Taliban because she publicly advocated for girls education and attended school herself. In her book, Malala blends the politics and the personal into a story not just of what happened to her, but also the difficulties-- both politically and otherwise-- in Pakistan today. Chosen as UW-Madison's 2014 Go Big Read selection.
The Goldfinch
In this literary novel, a 13-year-old-boy survives a terrorist explosion at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which kills his mother. He then finds himself the owner of a seventeenth century Dutch painting called “The Goldfinch,” and drawn into the dark and mysterious underworld of art dealing.
The Silver Star
Orphan Train
A troubled teenaged girl, who is helping an old woman organize her house, learns about the woman's early life as an Irish immigrant in New York City and in Minnesota, where she was sent at the age of nine, on an orphan train.
Jewelweed
Paroled after serving time for a crime he might not have committed, Brock Bookchester is back in his hometown of Words, Wisconsin. As he slowly tries to reconnect with family and friends, the residents of Words find that only by taking risks and making sacrifices can a community make one of its own whole again. Revisiting the world he created in Driftless, Rhodes creates a detailed, poignant portrait of those who call small towns home.
Life After Life
On a snowy evening in 1910, Ursula Todd is born. And dies. And is born again. Fated to return to life over and over, Ursula witnesses pivotal events and eventually proves that one woman can change history.
Flight Behavior
After witnessing a massive congregation of monarch butterflies, a young Tennessee farm wife sparks a debate between science and faith that leads her into a wider world than she knew before.
Me Before You
A young Englishwoman, Louisa Clark finds herself unemployed when the restaurant she works in is closed. She takes a job as caretaker for Will Traynor, a recently paralyzed man, and throws herself into trying to convince him to stay alive, despite his losses.
American Dervish
This coming-of-age story centers on young Hayat Shah, a Pakistani-American living in Milwaukee. His family's dynamics, and their various levels of engagement with Islam, are at the center of the novel.
Where'd You Go Bernadette?
In this unconventional and funny novel, a teenage girl assembles a mixed collection of documents to try to solve the disappearance of her mother, a former award-winning architect who found herself increasingly at odds with her life in Seattle.
The Garden of Evening Mists
Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of the brutal Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II, discovers a beautiful garden tended by the emperor’s exiled former gardener Aritomo. Haunted by the death of her sister during the war, Yun Ling asks Aritomo to help her build a garden in memory of her sister. But as she learns more about the garden’s intricacy and beauty, its connection to the pain and deceit of the past are also revealed.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask
Treuer, an Ojibwe scholar and cultural preservationist, answers the most commonly asked questions about American Indians, both historical and modern. He gives a frank, funny, and personal tour of what's up with Indians, anyway.