|
Readers' Night Out
Monday, March 2, 7:00 pm
Quigley's Irish Pub, 43 E. Jefferson Ave.
Socialize with other readers at Quigley's Irish Pub in downtown Naperville and share recent reads and favorite titles. Arrive at 6:15 p.m. to purchase dinner or join the group at 7 p.m. for the discussion only. *Register here.
|
|
|
Out of This World Book Club (NIC)
Wednesday, March 4, 7:00 pm
Program Room
"The Calculating Stars" by Mary Robinette Kowal
On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process. Elma York's experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn't take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can't go into space, too. Elma's drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions of society may not stand a chance against her.
|
|
|
Great Decisions Discussion Group (NBL)
Thursday, March 5 & 12, 7:15 pm
Conference Room
A national program from the Foreign Policy Association that explores one topic per week using reading material that provides historical background, examines the subject impartially, explores options and debates implications. For more information contact Becky Glimco at beckyglimco@aol.com.
|
|
|
Read Aloud Book Club (95th)
Thursday, March 12, 10:00 am
Lookout Room
Open to all adult readers, especially those who are learning English. Short stories will be read at a pace determined by the group.
|
|
|
Criminal Spines (NBL)
Thursday, March 12, 7:00 pm
Program Room
"Who is Vera Kelly?" by Rosalie Knecht
New York City, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent and blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She's working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue, and technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she's in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman and infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As Vera becomes more and more enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns the Cold War makes for strange and unexpected bedfellows, and she's forced to take extreme measures to save herself. An exhilarating page turner and perceptive coming-of-age story, Who Is Vera Kelly? is a novel that introduces an original, wry and whip-smart female spy for the twenty-first century.
|
|
|
Readers' Rendezvous Daytime Book Club (NIC)
Tuesday, March 17, 11:00 am
Program Room
"Grandma Gatewood's Walk" by Ben Montgomery
Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.” Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction. Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.
|
|
|
Great Books Reading and Discussion Group (NBL)
Tuesday, March 17, 7:00 pm
Conference Room
"Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov Referenced from the Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Third Series, Volumes 1 and 2.
Originally published in 1898 and performed for the first time in Moscow in 1899, “Uncle Vanya” is widely considered one of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s most important dramas. It is the tale of the visit of Serebryakov, a retired professor and his new, young wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that had belonged to Serebyrakov’s late first wife and that supports the couple in their urban lifestyle. The estate is run by Serebryakov’s adult unmarried daughter, Sonia, and her Uncle Vanya, brother to the late first wife. Essentially a reworking of another Chekhov play from a decade earlier, “The Wood Demon”, “Uncle Vanya” is a melancholic study in bitterness and regret as the characters reflect on their respective failures to accomplish their lives’ ambitions. Tensions and resentments boil over and Uncle Vanya is pushed to his breaking point when Serebryakov considers selling the estate so he may put the money in more lucrative investments with no thought to the lives he will displace in the process. A classic tragicomedy, “Uncle Vanya” has been praised as one of Chekhov’s most important plays ever since its first performance and continues to be revered and studied to this day.
|
|
|
Readers' Choice Book Club (95th)
Wednesday, March 18, 10:30 am
Lookout Room
"The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.
|
|
|