Every month Madison Public Library hosts a variety of book discussions and each of them warmly welcomes newcomers. So if you're someone who loves to talk books and want to join in, here are the groups who are meeting and the titles they'll discuss for August.
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NewBridge Book Group - Wednesday, August 6, 10-11 am - Meeting offsite or via Zoom. Check with the Lakeview Library for details.
God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet - San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God's Hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves--"anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care-ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years.
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Mystery Book Group - Wednesday, August 6, 7-8 pm - Sequoya Library
Everyone Here is Lying by Sheri Lapena - William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing. Who took Avery Wooler?
Thursday Book Club - Thursday, August 7, 2-3 pm - Alicia Ashman Library
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling - Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.
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Lakeview Book Group - Thursday, August 7, 6:30-8 pm - Lakeview Library
The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan - In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed to Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next half century in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967.
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Goodman South Madison Book Club - Saturday, August 16, 1:30-3 pm - Goodman South Madison Library
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich - Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.
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Central Book Group - Wednesday, August 20, 7-8:30 pm - Central Library
North Woods by Daniel Mason - When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave--only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
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District 11 Book Club - Wednesday, August 20, 7:15-8:30 pm - Sequoya Library
Shrink the City: The 15-Minute Urban Experiment and the Cities of the Future by Natalie Whittle - Join District 11 Alder Bill Tishler and other community members for a discussion of Whittle's book. At just 158 pages and written in a clear, engaging style, Shrink the City explores the growing global movement to reimagine cities so that essential services are within a short walk or bike ride. Whittle highlights how the 15-minute city model is being adopted around the world and what it means for building more inclusive, sustainable, and livable communities. Copies may be available at the Sequoya Ask Here desk, on a first-come first-serve basis.
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Third Thursday Book Discussion - Thursday, August 21, 2-3 pm - Sequoya Library
West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge - Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes...' Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California's first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo.
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Mystery Book Group - Thursday, August 21, 5:30-6:30 pm - Lakeview Library
The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell - When production for the tenth season of the hit cooking competition Bake Week begins at the gothic estate of the show's host and founder, celebrity chef Betsy Martin, everything seems normal. The six contestants are eager to prove their culinary talents over the course of five days, while Betsy struggles for control of the show with her new co-host, the brash and unpredictable Archie Morris. But as the baking competition gets under way, things begin to go awry. At first it's merely sabotage-sugar replaced with salt, a burner turned to high-but then someone shows up dead and suddenly everyone's a suspect.
Most libraries will have copies of the books available onsite for checkout if you'd like to pick up a copy, read it, and join a discussion.