Coffee Klatch is O’Neal Library’s weekly conversation
series. The meetings take place on Zoom
and broad topic is selected for each session.
Join your friends and neighbors or meet someone new! Register online for the Aug 12 meeting: “favorite
subjects in school” https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/4481829
This week, our Coffee Klatchers shared their favorite reads since
quarantine conditions started in March. If
you’re looking for some diverting reads, you may just find them here!
Advent:
The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge
With her trademark wit and wisdom, Rutledge explores Advent
as a time of rich paradoxes, a season celebrating at once Christ’s incarnation
and his second coming, and she masterfully unfolds the ethical
and future-oriented significance of Advent for the church.
Anarchism
and Other Essays by Emma Goldman
Widely considered to be one of the foremost experts on
Anarchist theory, Emma Goldman's classic essay on the
political/social/philosophical doctrine known as Anarchism is collected here,
along with other excellent essays covering a wide range of radical topics like
the enslavement of women, the destruction wrought by nationalism, the Puritan
ethos, and much more.
Animal
Farm by George Orwell
George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a
scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.
1984
by George Orwell
Written more than 70 years ago, 1984 was
George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and
gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the
narrative is timelier than ever.
The
Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia and How It Died by Philip Jenkins
In this groundbreaking book, renowned religion scholar
Philip Jenkins offers a lost history, revealing that for centuries
Christianity's center existed to the east of the Roman Empire.
A
Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts by Theresa Ann Fowler
The riveting novel of iron-willed Alva Vanderbilt and her
illustrious family as they rule Gilded-Age New York.
Cork
Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle
Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker
With boundless curiosity, humor, and a healthy dose of skepticism,
Bosker takes the reader inside underground tasting groups, exclusive New York
City restaurants, California mass-market wine factories, and even a
neuroscientist’s fMRI machine as she attempts to answer the most nagging
question of all: what’s the big deal about wine?
The
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Winner: 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National
Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The
Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another
strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish
reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
Girl,
Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Winner: Booker Prize)
Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of
the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an
interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the
state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s
colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
The
Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
From The New York Times-bestselling author
of The
Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children,
who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one
white.
A
Chosen Exile: The History of Racial Passing in American Life by Allyson Hobbs
Although black Americans who adopted white identities reaped
benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility, Hobbs helps us to recognize and
understand the grief, loneliness, and isolation that accompanied―and often
outweighed―these rewards.
The
Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book
Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night
watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North
Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of
love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose,
sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
Future
Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling,
National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The
Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her
life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake
of a cataclysmic event.
American
Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Already being hailed as "a Grapes of Wrath for
our times" and "a new American classic," Jeanine Cummins's American
Dirt is a rare exploration into the inner hearts of people willing to
sacrifice everything for a glimmer of hope.
Sudden
Death by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer
A daring, kaleidoscopic novel about the clash of empires and
ideas, told through a tennis match in the sixteenth century between the radical
Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, played
with a ball made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn.
Lost
Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
In Valeria Luiselli’s fiercely imaginative follow-up to the
American Book Award-winning Tell
Me How It Ends, an artist couple set out with their two children on a road
trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of summer. As the family travels
west, the bonds between them begin to fray: a fracture is growing between the
parents, one the children can almost feel beneath their feet.
The
Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel
Wilkerson
n this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer
Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold
stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who
fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
Caste:
The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (find Fresh Air
interview)
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The
Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has
shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy
of human divisions.
Furious
Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
“Compelling . . . at once a true-crime thriller, courtroom
drama, and miniature biography of Harper Lee. If To
Kill a Mockingbird was one of your favorite books growing up, you
should add Furious Hours to your reading list today.” —Southern
Living
Educated:
A Memoir by Tara Westover
An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of
school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge
University.
A
Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny
No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of
Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where
two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. But when the renowned
choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery's massive wooden door is
drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the
Sûreté du Québec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in
the apparent harmony. One of the brothers, in this life of prayer and
contemplation, has been contemplating murder.
The
Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, translated by William Weaver
The year is 1327. Benedictines in a wealthy Italian abbey
are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to
investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven
bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective.
Miss
Julia Speaks Her Mind by Ann B. Ross
With razor-sharp wit and perfect "Steel
Magnolia" poise, Miss Julia speaks her mind indeed-about a robbery, a
kidnapping, and the other disgraceful events precipitated by her husband's
death. Fast-paced and charming, with a sure sense of comic drama, a cast of
crazy characters, and a strong Southern cadence, Miss Julia Speaks Her
Mind will delight readers from first page to last.
A
Beginning at the End by Mike Chen
Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the
planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between
self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs. But when reports of
another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced
to finally face everything that came before—and everything they still stand to
lose.
My
Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is
told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s
bestselling debut novel, A
Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most
important human rights: the right to be different.
Dear
Edward by Ann Napolitano
One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his
beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in
Newark headed for Los Angeles. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes.
Edward is the sole survivor. Dear Edward is at once a transcendent
coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of
characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart
learns to love again.
How
to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Tom Hazard has just moved back to London, his old home, to
settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at
school, he meets a captivating French teacher at his school who seems
fascinated by him. But Tom has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary
41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom
has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with
Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an
ordinary life.
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