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Out of This World Book Club
Wednesday, February 1, 7:00 pm
Nichols Library
Program Room
Register here
"Dawn" by Octavia Butler
When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankali. She discovers that the Oankali--a seemingly benevolent alien race--intervened in the fate of the humanity hundreds of years ago, saving everyone who survived a nuclear war from a dying, ruined Earth and then putting them into a deep sleep. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth--but salvation comes at a price.
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Great Decisions Discussion Group
Thursday, February 2, 9, 16, & 23, 7:15 pm
Virtual Event
Email beckyglimco@aol.com to register
Sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association and facilitated by Naperville AAUW, Great Decisions is a national program that reviews eight current foreign policy issues of vital importance to the United States. Each topic provides historical background, examines the subject impartially, explores options facing citizens and policymakers, and debates the implications. This group will meet on Zoom on Thursday evenings. *Registration required
The discussion group is free but a book is required to fully participate in the discussion. It can be ordered at FPA.org either as an electronic version or a paperback. Each topic is about 10 pages of background material read at home, and in our meetings, we discuss the topic using questions listed in the book. Each topic is completed in one session so participants can attend all or one.
Contact Becky Glimco at beckyglimco@aol.com or 630-881-4948 for more information and to register to receive the Zoom link to join the discussion.
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Readers' Night Out
Tuesday, February 7, 7:00 pm
Naper Blvd. Library
Program Room
Register here
Socialize with other readers while sharing recent reads and favorite titles. *Registration required
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Criminal Spines
Thursday, February 9, 7:00 pm
Naper Blvd. Library
Program Room
Register here
"The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.
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Readers' Rendezvous Daytime Book Club
Tuesday, February 14, 11:00 am
Nichols Library
Program Room
"The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
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Readers' Choice Book Club
Wednesday, February 15, 10:30 am
95th Street Library
Lookout Room or Virtual
Register here to attend via Zoom
"A Mercy" by Toni Morrison
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in flesh, he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives. "A Mercy" reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter-a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.
This discussion will be hybrid. You can participate in person or join the discussion via Zoom. Registration is only required if you wish to participate via Zoom. The link to join will be emailed the morning of the event.
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Book Buzz
Tuesday, February 28, 7:00 pm
Naper Blvd. Library
Program Room
Register here
| Naperville Public Library librarians will discuss new books coming out this season, as well as give book recommendations for current books that are generating buzz with readers. *Registration required |
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