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Celebrity Book Clubs Florence Welch's "Between Two Books" Club
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Year of the monkey
by Patti Smith
From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train comes a memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Illustrations.
Available on eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print |
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How much of these hills is gold
by C Pam Zhang
Two orphaned Chinese immigrant siblings flee the threats of their gold rush mining town across an unforgiving landscape where their survival is tested by family secrets, sibling rivalry and disparate goals. A first novel.
Available on ReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print |
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Read & riot : a Pussy Riot guide to activism
by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova
From a life of inspired action and creative rebellion, a feminist artist, activist and Pussy Riot founder shares her core principles and formative experiences, offering inspiration for opposing authoritarian leaders and governments that threaten to suppress individual rights and freedoms.
Available in print
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Daniel Deronda
by George Eliot
A revealing portrait of the hypocrisy and superficiality of high society, George Eliot's final novel also offers a rare contemporary view of Jewish life in Victorian Britain. Daniel Deronda traces the intertwined lives of two markedly different characters: spirited, selfish Gwendolen Harleth, who maintains her social position and secures her family's future by entering a loveless and increasingly destructive marriage; and compassionate Daniel, whose rescue of a stra'ger leads to his immersion into the Jewish community and Zionist politics. Traumatized by the past and alienated by the present, Gwendolen and Daniel seek values that will add meaning to their lives. Eliot's theme, the position of Jews in British and European society, was an extremely unusual one for the era. Her keen analysis of the problem of prejudice makes this novel especially relevant to modern readers, as does her depiction of clashing personal and political issues during a time of social and economic turbulence.
Available on Overdrive
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Normal people : [a novel]
by Sally Rooney
The unconventional secret childhood bond between popular Connell and lonely, intensely private Marianne is tested by character reversals in their first year at a Dublin college that render Connell introspective and Marianne social, but self-destructive.
Available on eReadIllinois and Overdrive
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The lonely city : adventures in the art of being alone
by Olivia Laing
A work of reportage, memoir and biography on the subject of loneliness is told through the lives of six iconic artists, including Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper and more. By the author of The Trip to Echo Spring.
Available on Overdrive
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The empathy exams : essays
by Leslie Jamison
A collection of essays explores empathy, using topics ranging from street violence and incarceration to reality television and literary sentimentality to ask questions about people's understanding of and relationships with others.
Available on Overdrive and in print
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The outrun
by Amy Liptrot
The author relates her return home to her family's Orkney sheep farm at the age of thirty, after a decade of heavy drinking in London, where she discovered the natural healing she needed to put her on the path to recovery from addiction.
Available on Overdrive
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The lesser bohemians
by Eimear McBride
A young Irish drama student in 1990s London makes new friends, establishes a place for herself and seeks to shed her plain-girl identity before entering a whirlwind affair with an older man who changes her in unexpected ways. By the award-winning author of A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing.
Available on Overdrive
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Here I am
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A tale told over four tumultuous weeks in present-day Washington, D.C., traces the fracturing of a family in crisis when the three sons of Jacob and Julia confront the paradoxes between the lives they think they want and the lives they are actually living. By the award-winning author of Everything Is Illuminated.
Available on eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and audiobook CD
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Last exit to Brooklyn
by Hubert Selby
The decadence and violence of the urban streets is graphically portrayed in a novel set in a New York slum.
Available on eReadIllinois
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Geek love
by Katherine Dunn
Aloysious and Lillian Binewski, the proprietors of a traveling carnival, attempt to reduce overhead by breeding their own freak show, with tragic results, in a new edition of the acclaimed cult classic.
Available on Overdrive and in print
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Fates and furies
by Lauren Groff
Marrying in a glamorous whirlwind amid predictions of future greatness, Lotto and Mathilde are shaped throughout a subsequent shared decade by complications, secrets and powerful creative drives.
Available on eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print
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The wind-up bird chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
The saga of a mysteriously disintegrating marriage, suppressed memories of the tragedies of war, and a young man's search for his personal and national identity is set against the turbulent backdrop of twentieth-century Japan.
Available on Overdrive
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Just kids
by Patti Smith
A richly illustrated edition of Patti Smith's classic memoir incorporates new material and previously unpublished photographs into the story of her artistic collaboration with Robert Mapplethorpe in the heyday of early 1970s New York City.
Available on eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print
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Heartburn
by Nora Ephron
Out of analysis and seven months pregnant, cookbook writer Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband is into analysis and an affair and suffers six weeks of intense heartburn.
Available on Overdrive
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Not that kind of girl : a young woman tells you what she's "learned"
by Lena Dunham
The creator and star of HBO's Girls documents her coming-of-age in and out of the spotlight, recounting her experiences with everything from dieting and embarrassing sex to dirty old men and performing in less-than-ideal conditions. Reprint. This paperback edition contains two new essays. A #1 New York Times best-seller.
Available on eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and n print
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The goldfinch
by Donna Tartt
Taken in by a wealthy family friend after surviving an accident that killed his mother, 13-year-old Theo Decker tries to adjust to life on Park Avenue, in a novel by the author of The Secret History. Reprint. A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Available on audiobookCD, eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print
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The marriage plot
by Jeffrey Eugenides
Madeleine Hanna breaks out of her straight-and-narrow mold when she enrolls in a semiotics course and falls in love with charismatic loner Leonard Morten, a time which is complicated by the resurfacing of man who is obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is his destiny. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.
Available on audiobook CD, Overdrive, and in print
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The great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Narrator Nick Carraway-a transplant from the Midwest like Fitzgerald himself-observes the wasteful lives of his well-to-do neighbors in this tale of money, love, and the pursuit of the American dream. The unforgettable cast is headed by Jay Gatsby, a self-made man whose determination to realize his fantasies embodies both the glories of imagination and the grimness of reality. Above all, The Great Gatsby is animated by the magic of Fitzgerald's incandescent prose and its timeless exploration of the importance of honesty, the temptations of wealth, and the struggle to escape the past.
Available on audiobook CD, eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print
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A confederacy of dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
An obese New Orleans misanthrope who constantly rebukes society, Ignatius Reilly gets a job at his mother's urging but ends up leading a workers' revolt, in a twentieth anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Available on Overdrive and in print
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Their eyes were watching God : A Novel
by Zora Neale Hurston
When Janie Starks returns to her rural Florida home, she reminisces to her best friend, Pheoby, about her marriages and her relationship with a younger man.
Available on audiobook CD, eReadIllinois, Overdrive, and in print
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