Jump to: Brown bag Books

Contemporary Books

This year-round group meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Library. Titles for discussion are chosen and moderated by the group members. Each month the current title is available at the circulation desk in the Library. For further information, please call Sue Patterson at the Library, (734) 453-0750 or by email: spatterson@plymouthlibrary.org

View past reading selections at: A Decade of Reading and Contemporary Books, 2000 and Beyond

June 18, 2008
Loving Frank: A Novel ~ by Nancy Horan

In 1904, Frank Lloyd Wright started work on a house for an Oak Park couple, Edwin and Mameh Cheney, and before long, Frank and Mameh had begun a scandalous affair that became the stuff of headlines when they left their spouses and families to live and travel together. This fictionalization of the life of Mameh Cheney depicts an independent, educated woman at odds with the restrictions of the early 20th century, who pursued her intellectual interests and forbidden love at great personal cost. More than just a footnote in history, Horan creates a thoroughly modern tale of two fully realized people entirely and irrepressibly in love, whose story is tragically cut short in the most unexpected and violent way. The novel weaves romance, and the history of American architecture, with the political and philosophical debate on the role of women in our society, to form the tapestry of one unusual woman’s life.

July 16, 2008
Book Lovers’ Choice

During this popular evening for group members and newcomers alike, all are invited to share and compare authors, titles, and opinions on books they’ve read recently or books they’d like to read - fiction, non-fiction, old or new. Titles for the coming year of reading and discussion are selected this evening; all members are encouraged to bring along ideas for the group to consider. All interested book lovers are welcome to participate in this annual planning session.

August 20, 2008
A Thousand Splendid Suns ~ By Khaled Hosseini

Hosseini’s second novel, after The Kite Runner, views the plight of Afghanistan during the last half century through the eyes of two women of different generations, Mariam, who is the unhappily married first wife of a much older man, and Laila , the much younger second wife of the same man. Afghanistan’s thirty-year ordeal of war and oppression has forced the women of the country to make desperate choices to secure their survival. At the heart of the novel is the bond that develops between two very different women brought together by dire circumstances, who must become friends and allies. “Hoseini’s magnificent second novel is a sad and beautiful testament to both Afghani suffering and strength.” (Booklist)

Brown Bag Books

This daytime group meets on the fourth Wednesday of each month at noon in the library. Group members bring their own lunches and beverages are provided by the Library. Multiple copies of the works to be read are available at the library circulation desk. For more information, contact Aimee Haley, Adult Services Librarian, 734-453-0750, ext. 206 or email her at: ahaley@plymouthlibrary.org.

See a reading list of past selections: Books discussed at Brown Bag Books, 1999 - 2007

June 25, 2008
        A Thousand Splendid Suns ~ by Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini follows up The Kite Runner with another epic story of Afghanistan in turmoil.  Three decades of jihad, the Taliban, and civil war are portrayed in the lives of two very different women. Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman and is forced into marriage. Her husband Rasheed is twenty five years her senior and takes another wife, Laila, who is only fourteen. Bright, spirited, and in love with her childhood friend Tariq, Laila is compelled to marry Rasheed after her parents are killed in a bombing while fleeing the country. At first the two wives are enemies, but Mariam and Laila gradually come to see one another as allies against their violent husband. Their commitment to one another is a source of redemption in their struggle to survive.

July 23, 2008
Atonement ~ by Ian McEwan

One day in the summer of 1935, imaginative 13-year old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia enigmatically involved with Robbie Turner, the cleaning lady’s son. Robbie is jailed at Briony’s testimony and half a dozen lives are forever changed. Five years later, Robbie is part of the British Army during their harrowing retreat to Dunkirk at the beginning of World War II. Briony is later a nursing student and comes to awareness that she may have ruined two lives five years earlier. She seeks out her estranged sister Cecilia and Robbie in hopes of forgiveness for her accusations. What actually happened on that day in 1935? In a startling end of life confession, Briony the novelist reframes the story in a last ditch effort to seek atonement.

August 27, 2008
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Vida Winter, the most famous fiction author on the planet, is a notorious weaver of outlandish stories, even when they are about herself. Now aging and in poor health, she decides to document her secret and extraordinary life story. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller’s daughter with a flair for writing biographies of deep understanding, is summoned to the task. She travels to Yorkshire, England to interview Winter at her country estate. Lea tries to unravel the author’s amazing childhood. Along the way she confronts the family ghosts, secret illegitimate children, and a madwoman in the attic. But she must ask herself if Winter is indeed telling the truth.