Bookies of DeMotte

You are invited to come to DeMotte Library's book discussions. These discussions are held at two separate times - 2:00 pm OR 7:00 pm.

Both meetings will be held on the same day and discussing the same book. Read on for upcoming titles. (Calendar runs from June to June. New titles will be announced after the June meeting.)

"Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

-Francis Bacon

The following book descriptions can be found at www.amazon.com or www.readinggroupguides.com.

July 17, 2012
The Apothecary's Daughter
by Julie Klassen

Lillian Haswell, brilliant daughter of the local apothecary, yearns for more adventure and experience than life in her father's shop and their small village provides_ She also longs to know the truth behind her mother's disappearance, which villagers whisper about but her father refuses to discuss. Opportunity comes when a distant aunt offers to educate her as a lady in London. Lilly is torn when she is summoned back to her ailing fathers bedside. Women are forbidden to work as apothecaries, so to save the family legacy, Lilly will have to make it appear as if her father is still making all the diagnoses and decisions. But the suspicious eyes of a scholarly physician and a competing apothecary are upon her.

August 21, 2012
The lmmortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge — became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first 'immortal human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. Henrietta's family did not learn of her “immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. This is the story of the Lacks family—past and present—it is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

September 18, 2012
Minding Frankie
By Maeve Binchy

When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he reluctantly agrees to take care of the baby girl. Along with the help of a caring network of friends, family and neighbors—including Lisa, his broken-hearted classmate, and Emily, his American cousin—Noel adapts to his new responsibilities. But when a nosy social worker decides to get involved, she threatens to ruin their unconventional but special arrangement. It will be up to Noel to persuade her that everyone in the neighborhood has something to offer when it comes to minding Frankie.

October 16, 2012
Girl in Translation
by Jean Kwok

When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

November 20, 2012
Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

January 15. 2013
The Paris Wife
by Paula McLain

A deeply evocative story of ambition and betrayal, The Paris Wife captures a remarkable period of time and a love affair between two unforgettable people: Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley. Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and rouse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they've fought so hard for.

February 19, 2013
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World
by Vicki Myron

Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility (for a cat), and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most.

March 19, 2013
The Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Somer’s life is everything she imagined it would be—she's newly married and has started her career as a physician in San Francisco—until she makes the devastating discovery she never will be able to have children. The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughters life by giving her away, It is a decision that will haunt Kavita for the rest of her life, and cause a ripple effect that travels across the world and back again. Asha, adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage, is the child that binds the destinies of these two women. We follow both families, invisibly connected until Asha's journey of self-discovery leads her back to India. Compulsively readable and deeply touching, Secret Daughter is a story of the unforeseen ways in which our choices and families affect our lives, and the indelible power of love in all its many forms.

April 16, 2013
Riding the Bus With My Sister
by Rachel Simon

Beth is a spirited woman with mental retardation, who spends nearly every day riding the buses in Philadelphia. The drivers, a lively group, are her mentors; her fellow passengers are her community. When Beth asks her sister Rachel to accompany her on the buses for one year, they take a transcendent journey together that changes Rachel's life in incredible ways and leads her to accept her sister at long last—teaching her to slow down and enjoy the ride.

May 21, 2013
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb: A Novel
by Melanie Benjamin

She was only two feet, eight inches tall, but more than a century later, her legend reaches out to us. As a child, Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Warren Bump was encouraged to live a life hidden away from the public. Instead, she reached out to the immortal impresario P. T. Barnum, married the tiny superstar General Tom Thumb in the wedding of the century, and became the world's most unexpected celebrity. Vinnie's wedding captivated the nation, preempted coverage of the Civil War, and even ushered her into the White House. But her fame also endangered the person she prized most: her similarly sized sister, Minnie, a gentle soul unable to escape the glare of Vinnie's spotlight. A barnstorming novel of the Gilded Age, this is the irresistible epic of a heroine who conquered the country with a heart as big as her dreams—and whose story will surely win over yours.