There's No Denying It

Bernardsville Library’s book group, Memoirs & Coffee, will look death in the face when they discuss a thought-provoking memoir, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” on Tuesday, June 23, 10:30 a.m.

FYI, the smoky part of the title refers to its subtitle – “& Other Lessons From The Crematory.” Written by Caitlin Doughty, a licensed mortician with a killer sense of humor and reality, the book serves to acquaint the living with how the newly departed are handled postmortem. As a young college graduate, Caitlin took a job in a crematory and realized just how far removed most Americans are from the facts of death. She began blogging about this as Ask A Mortician and has since founded The Order of the Good Death collective. Her mission is to make people realize that death is a part of life and that acceptance of this enables us to lead good lives with less fear of death. So, if you’re up for this discussion, join the group. They’d love to have your company!

Not One, Not Two, But Three!

Did you know that Bernardsville Public Library has three book discussion groups which meet at different times and days of the week?  Never again say that there's no time in your life for a book group.  We've scheduled our discussion groups with you in mind! 

Do you prefer an evening time slot or perhaps a group meeting on a weekend afternoon? Is morning the most convenient time for you? Please consider joining one of our three monthly discussion groups at any point in the year; membership is open to the public.  

Page Turners, our newest discussion group led by library director April L. Judge, will meet on Tuesday, November 11, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin. The following meeting is set for Thursday, December, 4, at 6:30 p.m. when Page Turners will discuss Amy Tan's book, The Bonesetter's Daughter. 

For those who prefer mornings, the library offers a memoir discussion group led by Pat Kennedy-Grant. This group, Memoirs & Coffee, will meet on Tuesday, November 18, at 10:30 a.m. to discuss Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward. There will be no meeting in December, but Etched in Sand by Regina Calcaterra is to be discussed in 2015 on Tuesday, January 27, at 10:30 a.m.

Saturday Samplers is the group for those who want to wind down on a Saturday afternoon with a book group which samples various kinds of literature, including nonfiction, short stories, plays, and fiction. Facilitated by Evelyn Fischel, Saturday Samplers will next meet on Saturday, December 6, at 3:30 p.m. to discuss Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story collection No One Writes to the Colonel.  There will be no meeting in January, but in 2015 the group will tackle The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen on Saturday, February 7, at 3:30 p.m. 

In all three cases, new members are always welcome to attend and books will be made available to borrow.  Why not try one of these book groups out for yourself?

After Visiting Friends...

New members are encouraged to join the next Memoirs and Coffee book group meeting on Tuesday, June 24, at 10:30 a.m. when Michael Hainey's memoir, After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story, will be discussed.  Currently deputy editor of GQ, Hainey used his reporter's sense of curiosity and doggedness to solve the mystery behind his father's death.  Bob Hainey, a newspaperman at the Chicago Sun-Times, died at the age of 35 under less than clear circumstances.  His son, Michael, took up the quest to find out what really happened to his father, but encountered many evasions and secrets. It seems his father's friends at the newspaper had maintained the "newspaperman's code of silence" regarding this death, and the author's mother had little to share as well.  Borrow a copy of this book at the circulation desk and find out what Michael Hainey uncovered.

Mom & Me & Mom Memoir

Memoirs & Coffee library book group will discuss Maya Angelou's memoir entitled Mom & Me & Mom on Tuesday, May 27, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room. Ms. Angelou writes a deeply personal memoir of the mother/daughter relationship, starting with the point when her own mother sent a very young Maya and her brother to live with a grandmother. Natural feelings of abandonment and loss become tempered by a growing sense of respect and love for her mother over the years. This book should give the reader new insights into Maya Angelou and how her life affected her literature.  Copies of Mom & Me & Mom are available at the circulation desk for anyone who would like to attend this book discussion.

She Matters

Susanna Sonnenberg's 2013 memoir, She Matters: A Life in Friendships, will be discussed by the library's book group, Memoirs & Coffee, on Tuesday, April 22, at 10:30 a.m. The group will meet in the Community Room for their discussion led by Pat Kennedy-Grant.  Copies of the book are now available at the front desk.

Publisher's Weekly writes that Sonnenberg's book is a "tribute to her lifelong fortress of friendship" and that "her strikingly honest depictions of tumultuous female alliances and confessions about friendships are both moving and relatable."  Some bonds of friendship broke easily, others lasted. Find out why writing about this topic was so important to this particular author; join the upcoming book discussion.

No Orthodoxy

Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, will be discussed by Memoirs & Coffee book group on Tuesday, Nov. 19, at 10:30 a.m.  Ms. Feldman’s memoir demonstrates just how transformative an exposure to literature can be.  Raised in the repressively strict religious community of the Satmar Hasidim, this Brooklyn author was bound in marriage at age seventeen to a man she did not know, but found the courage to change her life after secretly reading forbidden books, particularly those by Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott.  Ms. Feldman’s self-emancipation also engendered an ongoing search for her own identity as a modern Jewish woman.

...On Being Stalked

James Lasdun's recent book Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked will be discussed by Bernardsville Library book group Memoirs and Coffee on Tuesday, October 22, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.

Lasdun's memoir recounts how a student/teacher email correspondence went terribly wrong so swiftly and destructively, leading to what he calls a campaign of "verbal terrorism" by his female student.  About Give Me Everything You Have, Publishers Weekly writes, "This subtle, compassionate take on the subject is rife with insights into the current cyberculture's cult of anonymity, as well as the power, failure, and magic of writing." Copies of the book are available, and new members are encouraged to attend the book group discussion.

From the South Bronx to the Supreme Court

My Beloved World, the 2013 memoir by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, will be discussed by Memoirs and Coffee book group on Tuesday, September 24, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  The public is welcome to attend this library book group discussion, and extra copies of the book are available at the circulation desk.  Bernardsville Library also has a copy of the memoir in Spanish, Mi Mundo Adorado, which may be borrowed.  Whether you read it in Spanish or English, My Beloved World will give you a clear sense of the determination, patience, and intelligence of a young Sotomayor who grew up in the Spanish-speaking projects of the South Bronx, yet attained admission to Princeton University and Yale Law School.  Along the way she had to deal with personal and family health issues and a failed marriage, still her spirited quest for a meaningful life eventually brought her to the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court in the service of justice.  

My First Coup d'Etat

A memoir of his youth in Ghana from the current president of the nation, My First Coup d'Etat: and Other True Stories from the Lost Decades of Africa is the next selection for Bernardsville Library's book group, Memoirs and Coffee.  My First Coup d'Etat will be discussed on Tuesday, June 25, at 10:30 a.m. in the library.  Memoirs and Coffee is open to new members who may borrow copies of the book at the circulation desk.

Written by John Dramani Mahama, President of the Republic of Ghana since 2012, My First Coup d'Etat describes growing up in Ghana during the tumult of post-independence. The Wall Street Journal noted that “Mr. Mahama is at his best in describing this vanished world. He does so with the eye of a historian and the flair of a novelist...At times the lost world he describes seems almost magical, as if it were populated by fairies and demons rather than real people... His stories overflow with humanity.”

The Good Girls Revolt

Memoirs and Coffee, one of Bernardsville Library's book groups, will discuss Lynn Povich's  The Good Girls Revolt, on Tuesday, Jan. 22, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  Copies of the book are now available and new members are invited to attend.

The Good Girls Revolt recounts the story of a movement for female workers' rights at Newsweek in the 1960's when women were deemed suitable only for the mail room and fact checking.  Newsweek's female workforce wanted more, specifically that a third of the reporters and writers be women, and they sued Newsweek twice for a more equitable distribution of jobs.

What seems like a reasonable demand now was revolutionary at the time.  Author Lynn Povich was part of this movement and became the first female senior editor at Newsweek as a result of the "good girls revolt."

The Hare with Amber Eyes

Bernardsville Library’s book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will discuss Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes on Tuesday, September 25, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room.  This book discussion group meets monthly and is open to new members who like to read memoirs and biographies.  The discussion is led by library staff member Pat Kennedy-Grant who has made extra copies of The Hare with Amber Eyes available at the circulation desk.

Edmund de Waal’s curiosity was piqued when he inherited a collection of netsuke, tiny Japanese carvings. What were they? How did they figure into his family’s history? He would come to learn that the netsuke were all that remained of his Viennese family’s vast art collections, destroyed in the Nazi persecution of Jews. Five generations of towering success and wealth for the Ephrussis family were stripped away in World War II, yet the netsuke had been miraculously saved by a maid who sewed them into a mattress. De Waal’s book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, explores family history under extraordinary conditions and the little miracles that endure such destruction.

A Life From A To Z

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, July 24th at 10:30 a.m. in the library’s Community Room.  Pat Kennedy-Grant,  Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (2005) by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Ms. Rosenthal has ingeniously adapted a centuries-old format for conveying knowledge into a poignant, wise, often funny, fully realized memoir.  Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life. Start anywhere and see how one young woman’s alphabetized existence can open up and define the world in new and unexpected ways.

 According to her website, ”Ms. Rosenthal is a person who likes to make things – children’s books, adult books, short films, salads, connections with the universe, something out of nothing, wishes.”  In The New York Times, her award-winning children’s books were described as “radiating fun the way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting.”  As for her adult work, Amazon named Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life one of the top ten memoirs of the decade.  A contributor to the TED conference and NPR, she is currently the host and creator of Mission Amy KR.com produced by WBEZ.  She lives with her family in Chicago.

Wildflower

Journalist Mark Seal reported on the remarkable life and violent death of naturalist Joan Root in a 2006 Vanity Fair article, but quickly realized that a magazine piece could not do justice to her story.  In 2009 he published his biography of Joan Root entitled Wildflower: an extraordinary life and untimely death in Africa. Bernardsville Library's book group Memoirs and Coffee will discuss Wildflower at its next meeting to be held Tuesday, June 26, at 10:30 a.m.  New members are invited to attend, and copies of the book are available at the circulation desk.

Let's Go Be Revolutionaries!

Deb Olin Unferth's memoir, Revolution: the Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, is the subject of the next Memoirs and Coffee book discussion this Tuesday, May 22, at 10:30 a.m. in the library.  Ms. Unferth "went to join the war" after falling in love with a college co-ed described as idealistic, to say the least.  The author changed faiths for him, and together they ventured off to Nicaragua to attempt to join the Sandanista Army in 1987.  But the Sandanistas had little use for them, the couple was continually robbed as they moved around the country, and malnutrition began to set in.  Love did not last.  Neither did the author's fervor for "revolution jobs."  Copies of the book are available in the library, and new members are invited to attend this book discussion.

What Memory Serves

Bernardsville Library's book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will discuss Half a Life by Darin Strauss at its next meeting on Tuesday, April 24th, at 10:30 a.m.  Memoirs and Coffee, led by Pat Kennedy-Grant, welcomes newcomers, who may obtain copies of the book at the circulation desk.  The title of Half a Life refers in part to the author's realization that he had lived half a lifetime longer than the teenage bicyclist he accidentally killed with his car when he was also a teen. As The New York Times 2010 review notes, "At the center of this elegant, painful, stunningly honest memoir thrums a question fundamental to what it means to be human: What do we do with what we’ve been given?"  For Strauss, those pain-filled memories and present-day consequences must be thoroughly examined in the manner in which he can best deliver, as a writer.

Library Book Group Now Reading "Unbroken"

Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 bestseller, Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, will be discussed by Bernardsville Library's book group, Memoirs and Coffee, on Feb. 28th at 10:30 a.m.  Army Air Force pilot Louis Zamperini is the subject of Unbroken which recounts his years of torment after his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean during wartime. The author's webpage notes that "Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve,and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will."  Copies of Unbroken are available at the circulation desk, and this group discussion will be open to the public.

Library Book Group To Discuss The Memory Palace

Mira Bartok's memoir of family dysfunction and mental illness, The Memory Palace, will be discussed at the next meeting of Memoirs and Coffee on Tuesday, January 24th, at 10:30 a.m.  The Memory Palace  recounts the damaging effects her mother's schizophrenia had on both the author and her sister.  At one point both sisters severed all contact with their mother because of her destructive behavior.  Nonetheless, Mira Bartok found a need to reconnect with her mother when she herself was recovering from a debilitating accident.  The book discussion will be led by Pat Kennedy-Grant who invites new members to join Memoirs and Coffee. Copies of The Memory Palace are available now at the circulation desk.

Memoirs and Coffee Meets Tomorrow

Bernardsville Library book group, Memoirs and Coffee, will discuss The Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil at its next meeting on Tuesday, October 25th, at 10:30 a.m.  Memoirs and Coffee is the library's open-invitation book discussion group dedicated to reading memoirs.  Staff member Pat Kennedy-Grant is the coordinator for this group, which meets monthly in the Community Room.  New members are always welcomed.

Author Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2001 as a humanitarian aid volunteer, but soon doubted her ability to offer substantive skills.  Her training had been in hairdressing, yet Westerners and Afghan women swiftly sought her out once they learned this.  Before Taliban rule, Afghan women had experienced success running beauty salons, and now they hungered to reestablish themselves in the beauty business.  Rodriguez gathered sponsors who enabled her to found the Kabul Beauty School in 2003.

Friendships and stories shared among these women and the author reveal what some Afghan women must contend with in their culture.  Random House published this book in 2007 and offers these notes, "...within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year old bride sold into marriage to pay her family's debts, the Taliban member's wife who pursued her training despite her husband's constant beatings."

September Library Book Groups To Meet

Bernardsville Library's two book groups will meet in September.  Saturday Samplers will discuss Elizabeth Cunningham's novel, The Passion of Mary Magdalen, this Saturday, September 10, at 3:30 p.m. in the library.

Memoirs and Coffee will discuss Townie: a memoir by Andre Dubus III on Tuesday, September 27 at 10:30 a.m.  Members of this book group are invited to read an additional novel or short story collection by the same author.  Copies of these September books are available at the circulation desk.

Scientific and Literary Versions of Immortality

Memoirs and Coffee, one of Bernardsville Public Library's book groups, will discuss Rebecca Skloot's narrative nonfiction bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, at its next meeting, Tuesday, July 26, at 10:30 a.m. Pat Kennedy-Grant will lead the discussion which is open to the public. Please meet in the library Community Room.

Shown above in one of only a few extant photographs, Henrietta Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer who died in 1951 of a virulent form of cervical cancer after being treated at Johns Hopkins.  She left behind young children, a husband and many friends, but what her family did not know is that a biological legacy of hers was also left behind or, perhaps we should say, unwittingly taken from her.  That legacy is the untold number of HeLa cells (named after her) which were originally removed in a small biopsy by a Johns Hopkins doctor.

These cells were cultured and demonstrated to have a remarkable ability to self-generate in the laboratory. This virtually endless supply of cells still generated from her original culture have been applied by researchers around the world to advance the study of gene mapping, create the polio vaccine, develop chemotherapy and other medical breakthroughs.  While millions of dollars have passed hands because of the great demand for her cells, no money has ever been given to the family of Henrietta Lacks.  The troubled story of her family, particularly the children she left behind, and their struggle to grasp the magnitude of their loss is treated with sensitivity, honesty and also charm by the author.  The family's personal drama nicely balances out the scientific information which Rebecca Skloot presents in very readable fashion in this excellent book.