The next Books & Beyond (BAB) meeting will be on
Tuesday, July 19 at 6:30pm. You’ll
notice we’re meeting a week early to avoid conflict with the Children’s
Department summer reading block party.
The meeting will be one of our biannual Salon Discussions, so there is
no assigned topic. Come to the meeting
and tell us about something good you’ve read, watched, or listened to recently!
This week, BAB met to chat about Booker Prize-shortlisted
and winning novels. If you are not
familiar with the Booker Prize, it is a literary prize awarded each year for
the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
Winners
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
The elderly Claudia Hampton, a best-selling author of
popular history; lies alone in a London hospital bed. Memories of her life
still glow in her fading consciousness, but she imagines writing a history of
the world. Instead, Moon Tiger is her own history, the life of a strong,
independent woman, with its often contentious relations with family and
friends. At its center — forever frozen in time, the still point of her turning
world — is the cruelly truncated affair with Tom, a British tank commander whom
Claudia knew as a reporter in Egypt during World War II.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the
king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war.
Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn.
The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas
Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and
opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But
Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break
the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?
Shortlisted
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the
Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem
degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left
behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For
reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within
his own circle of friends. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a
series of confrontations with colleagues and an unexpected encounter with an
ostensibly straight white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while
exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
One postwar summer, in his home in rural Warwickshire, Dr.
Faraday is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for
more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is
now in decline. Its owners--mother, son, and daughter--are struggling to keep
pace with a changing society. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more
sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely,
and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
Room by Emma Donoghue
Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her
precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the
outside world for the first time. Room is a tale at once shocking,
riveting, exhilarating — a story of unconquerable love in harrowing
circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
Once one of the most beguiling women in Sligo, Roseanne
McNulty is now a resident of Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and nearing her
hundredth year. Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret
Scripture is an engrossing tale of one woman's life, and a poignant story
of the cruelties of civil war and corrupted power. The Secret Scripture is
now a film starring Rooney Mara, Eric Bana, and Vanessa Redgrave.
Several of these titles have a film or TV adaptation:
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