Tag Archives: book clubs

Book Club Kits Are Now Available!

Book clubs throughout our community are now able to check out kits created just for them! Each kit will include ten copies of a specially selected title, along with discussion questions, author information, and suggestions for further reading, all contained in a sturdy zippered bag.

Fiction kits available now are:

  • A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
  • The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
  • The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen

Nonfiction kits available now are:

  • Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance
  • Lab Girl  by Hope Jahren
  • The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
  • Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

Upcoming titles to be included are:

  • The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
  • The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House by Jesse Holland
  • The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
  • An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn
  • The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
  • Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
  • The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan
  • Grace by Paul Lynch

Fiction and nonfiction titles are selected by the Chatham Community Library Book Club. After the club has discussed a book, a kit for checkout will be created.

Each kit will check out for six weeks to one library card holder who will be responsible to return the entire kit. Since most book clubs meet monthly, this gives time to pick up the kit, distribute the books to members at a meeting, discuss the book at the next meeting and collect the books, and return the kit to the library where it will be readied for another group to checkout.

Book club kits have long been available from most other library systems in our area. With generous support from the Friends of the Chatham Community Library, Chatham County is now able to offer this service.

To reserve a kit for your group, please send a message to cclbookclub (at) chathamlibraries.org or call the library at 919-545-8084.

We will gladly accept a book club kit donation from outside clubs. When your group is finished with a title, please consider donating ten copies to the library for other groups to borrow.

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Haiku Book Reviews of Book Club Selections

These haiku book reviews, written as part of Chatham Community Library’s promotion of National Poetry Month, were crafted by our own librarian Sharen Faye.  Each book was a recent Chatham Community Library book club selection.  We invite you to submit your own haiku book reviews at http://tinyurl.com/chathamhaiku.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan
She sits in judgment.
He asks her to let him die.
What is God’s purpose?

 

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Despite depression
Gold at Hitler’s Olympics
Nine row to glory

 

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Elderly couple
Childless, flee to Alaska,
find snow child and love

We now have an evening book club and a daytime book club, which both read the same title.  Our evening book club meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 6:45 pm.  The daytime book club meets on the first Thursday of each month at 1:00 pm.  Check out these upcoming titles and join us for a lively discussion – newcomers are always welcome!

May:  In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
June:  Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman & Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
July:  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
August:  Factory Man by Beth Macy
September:  Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruger
October:  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
November:  The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward
December:  Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry

J & P Voelkel

We are very excited to have J & P Voelkel visiting us tomorrow, Wednesday, March 20th at 4:00,  to talk about their series The Jaguar Stones.   They will be talking in the Holmes meeting room.  Both the 11 and up book club (Insert Book Here) and the boy’s book club (Awesomeness) read the first book in their series, Middleworld, in preparation for the event. Insert Book Here made jewelry based on the Mayan symbols  representing their birthdays.   Awesomeness played a modified version of the Mayan ball game, Pitz.

Here is a synopsis of the first book in The Jaguar Stones series, Middleworld,  from the Voelkel’s website:

Fourteen-year-old Max Murphy, video-gamer extraordinaire, is furious when his archaeologist parents cancel the family vacation to go on a dig in Central America. But things go from bad to worse when Max is summoned to join them, only to discover that his parents have vanished. With the help of Lola, a fast-talking, quick-thinking Maya girl, Max embarks on a quest to find out just what’s going on. Soon Max and Lola are running for their lives in the perilous rainforest, as they unlock ancient secrets, meet mysterious strangers, and begin to understand that, in San Xavier, nothing is ever as it seems.

Fate has delivered a challenge of epic proportions to Max Murphy. But can a teen whose biggest talent is for video games rescue his  parents from the Maya Underworld and save himself from the villainous Lords of Death?

Final Preparations are underway. We’ll share photos and details of the event soon. We hear they might be bringing us fried mealworms to try!

Coming soon to your library…

Two new reading groups are coming to your library this January:

  • Let’s Talk About It Mysteries! Let’s Talk About It is a series of programs offered by the North Carolina Humanities Council and the State Library of North Carolina.  Each program features discussions of books or films moderated by North Carolina Humanities Council scholars.  The Friends of the Chatham Community Library have been awarded a grant to bring this program and the scholar-moderators to Chatham Community Library during the next few months.  Our program, Mysteries, will kick off with a presentation by Friends of the Library President Rhoda Berkowitz entitled The History of Mystery.  At five meetings following her presentation, Humanties Council scholars will moderate discussions of five different contemporary mysteries. Find out more about his program and add your name to the waiting list for our Let’s Talk About It: Mysteries program here.
  • ¿Español? Luis in Circulation will be leading a Spanish-language reading group. Sign up at the circulation desk or come to the first organizational meeting on January 21 at 11 am at the library. For more information email Luis.

Are you a writer? Do you aspire to write? Well come write in…

  • Molly in Circulation will be leading a weekly writing group beginning in February. The group will meet each week to write and share our work with each other. Each week’s session will have a different goal–from idea generation to critiquing finished work, come for whichever sessions you like. Find more information here. Questions? Want to sign up? Email Molly.