TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee Date: April 28, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
The explosion of racial hate and violence in a small Alabama town is viewed by a little girl whose father defends a Black man accused of rape. Led by PVCC Professor Ben Sloan. more info
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UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett Date: May 19, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Obliged to borrow a book when her corgis stray into a mobile library, the Queen discovers a passion for reading, setting the palace upon its head and causing the royal head of Great Britain to question her role in the monarchy.
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CARPE DIEM by Autumm Cornwell Date: June 23, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Sixteen-year-old Vassar Spore's detailed plans for the next twenty years of her life are derailed when her bohemian grandmother insists that she join her in Southeast Asia for the summer, but as she writes a novel about her experiences, Vassar discovers new possibilities.
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A WALK IN THE WOODS by Bill Bryson
Date: July 28, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Published on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Appalachian Trail, a wry account by the author of The Lost Continent traces an adventurous trek past the trail's natural pleasures, human eccentrics, and offbeat comforts.
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SHADOW DIVERS: THE TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO AMERICANS WHO RISKED EVERYTHING TO SOLVE ONE OF THE LAST MYSTERIES OF WORLD WAR II by Robert Kurson Date: August 25, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Recounts the 1991 discovery of a sunken German U-boat by two recreational scuba divers, tracing how they devoted the following six years to researching the identities of the submarine and its crew, correcting historical texts and breaking new grounds in the world of diving along the way.
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SUITE FRANCAISE by Irene Nemirovsky Date: September 22, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Published more than sixty years following the author's death at Auschwitz, a remarkable story of life under the Nazi occupation includes two parts--"A Storm in June," set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied provincial village rife with jealousy, resentment, resistance, and collaboration.
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THREE CUPS OF TEA by Greg Mortenson Date: October 27, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Traces how the author, having been rescued and resuscitated by Himalayan villagers after a failed attempt to climb K2, worked to build schools that would particularly benefit the young girls who were forbidden an education by Taliban restrictions, an endeavor for which his life has been repeatedly threatened.
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THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz Date: November 17, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Living with an old-world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and believes that a long-standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness.
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Date: December 15, 2008
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Read anything and share your books. Plus annual cookie exchange
PILLARS OF THE EARTH by Ken Follett Date: January 26, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Set in twelfth-century England, this epic of kings and peasants juxtaposes the building of a magnificent church with the violence and treachery that often characterized the Middle Ages.
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ON CHESIL BEACH by Ian McEwan
Date: February 23, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
On their wedding day, a young couple--Florence, daughter of an Oxford academic and a successful businessman, and Edward, an earnest history student with little experience of women--looks forward to the future while worrying about their upcoming wedding night.
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THE DOUBLE BIND by Christopher Bohjalian Date: March 23, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Withdrawing into her photography and a job at a homeless shelter after being attacked while riding her bike, student Laurel Estabrook encounters Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of secret photos, but when Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel is certain that the photos hide a dark family secret and embarks on an obsessive, potentially dangerous search for the truth.
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THE TORTILLA CURTAIN by T. Coraghessan Boyle Date: April 27, 2009
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
The lives of two different couples - wealthy Los Angeles liberals, and a pair of Mexican illegals - suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.
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NEVER ENOUGH by Joe McGinnis Date: May 18, 2009
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
The author of Fatal Vision examines the suspicious death of Andrew Kissel, who had received custody of his murdered brother's children three years earlier and whose own killing remains unsolved. Check the Catalog ![]()
Date: June 22, 2009
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
A series of letters, written to family and friends, reveals the life and times of Ivy Rowe, as she grows from girlhood to old age, finds love, dreams great visions, and raises a family.
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GODS BITS OF WOOD by Sembene Ousmane Date: July 27, 2009
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
In 1947-48 the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway staged a strike. In this vivid, timeless novel, Sembene Ousmane envinces the color, passion, and tragedy of those formative years in the history of West Africa. Melissa Hutchinson will be presenting a slide show and exhibit of her time spent in Senegal, Africa.
FOUNDING MOTHERS: THE WOMEN WHO RAISED OUR NATION by Cokie Roberts Date: August 31, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
An inspirational but personal look into the trials and tribulations of historical women who helped shape our nation into what it has become exhibits the many facets of their lives and how they supported some of the founders of our country, profiling such key figures as Abigail Adams, Eliza Pinkney, Dolley Payne Madison, Deborah Read Franklin, and Catherine Littlefield Greene. Check the Catalog ![]()
THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett Date: September 21, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another. Check the Catalog ![]()
DEWEY THE SMALL-TOWN LIBRARY CAT WHO TOUCHED THE WORLD by Vicki Myron Date: October 19, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Traces the author's discovery of a half-frozen kitten in the drop-box of her small-community Iowa library and the feline's development into an affable library mascot whose intuitive nature prompted hundreds of abiding friendships, in a tale told against a backdrop of the town's struggles with the 1980s farm crisis.
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Date: November 23, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Everyone can discuss what they have been reading.
AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR by Patrick Taylor Date: December 14, 2009
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Conjures up the rural Irish town of Ballybucklebo where there are engaging and eccentric townspeople, whose hilarious mishaps provide a perfect foil for the endeavors of the town’s medical men. Check the Catalog
There will also be a holiday cookie exchange.
DREAMERS OF THE DAY by Mary Russell Date: January 25, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
In the wake of the Great War and the devastating influenza pandemic of 1919, forty-year-old Ohio schoolteacher Agnes Shanklin decides to use her inheritance to take a trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land, where she meets T. E. Lawrence and Karl Weilbacher, a charming German spy with an intense interest in Lawrence.
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THE RIVER OF DOUBT: THEODORE ROOSEVELT'S DARKEST JOURNEY by Candice Millard Date: February 22, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Chronicles the 1914 expedition of Theodore Roosevelt into the unexplored heart of the Amazon basin to explore and map the region surrounding a tributary called the River of Doubt, detailing the perilous conditions they faced. Check the Catalog ![]()
A LESSON BEFORE DYING by Ernest J. Gaines Date: March 22, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Dr. Justin Wert, PVCC English Prof, will moderate the discussion. The story of two African American men struggling to attain manhood in a prejudiced society, in Louisiana in the late 1940s. It concerns Jefferson, a mentally slow, barely literate young man, who, though an innocent bystander to a shootout between a white store owner and two black robbers, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and the sophisticated, educated man who comes to his aid.
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THE GIRL WITH NO SHADOW by Joanne Harris Date: April 26, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Vianne assumes a low-profile new identity in Paris, where she opens a chocolaterie and hopes to escape the ghosts of her past before a devious new friend threatens everything she has worked for.
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THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver Date: May 24, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Harrison William Shepherd, a highly observant writer, is caught between two worlds--in Mexico, working for communists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, and later in America, where he his caught up in the patriotism of World War II--in a gripping story about identity and the power of words. Check the Catalog ![]()
THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN by Garth Stein Date: June 28, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver. Check the Catalog ![]()
THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN by Kate Morton Date: July 26, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter. Check the Catalog ![]()
HONK AND HOLLER OPENING SOON by Billie Letts Date: August 23, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
The author of the multi-award-winner, Where the Heart Is, tells the poignant, lyrical story of a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran whose life is changed when a young woman enters his roadside café.
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Date: September 27, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
After being left brain damaged, with the mind of a seven year old, following a bicycle accident, Madeline, Aaron Maciver's beautiful young wife, is cared for by Aaron and his second wife along with two children of their own, in an insightful novel, narrated by Aaron's son Mac, that follows the Maciver family through four decades. Check the Catalog ![]()
Date: October 25, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Set against the backdrop of the Korean War in the 1950s, a multi-layered novel about family, the power of loss and love, the repercussions of war, old secrets, and the bonds that unite and sustain personal relationships focuses on a single family. Check the Catalog ![]()