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?

A Cup of Tea

Saturday Samplers will discuss Amy Ephron's novella, A Cup of Tea, on Dec. 7th at 3:30 p.m. in the library.  Copies of the book are available to borrow, and new members are encouraged to attend meetings of this library book discussion group.

Ms. Ephron based her book on a short story of the same title published in 1922 by Katherine Mansfield.  Beginning with the same premise as Mansfield's story, A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron takes the characters in an entirely different direction.  To read the original short story by Katherine Mansfield or to learn more about Saturday Samplers, please refer to the book group's blog.

A Dickens of a True Story

Fetid drinking water, often contaminated with human waste and life-threatening bacteria, was the only option for many Londoners in the mid-nineteenth century when cholera became a common occurrence.  Overcrowded living conditions and overflowing garbage mounds added to a recipe for health disasters, one of which struck a section of London in the 1850's in a ferocious cholera outbreak.  The Ghost Map, by Steven Johnson, recounts how this outbreak came to pass, details the microbial profile of cholera, and describes how two Londoners came to realize its source at a time when scientific understanding of disease and its spread was shockingly limited.  Saturday Samplers library book group will discuss this exciting book at their next meeting to be held on Saturday, November 2, at 3:30 p.m. in the library. Copies of the book are still available at the circulation desk, and new members are welcome to attend.

The Circus in Winter

Saturday Samplers book group will discuss Cathy Day's novel, The Circus in Winter, on Saturday, October 5, at 3:30 p.m. in the library.  Ms. Day currently teaches in the English Department of Ball State University, but at one time was an instructor at The College of New Jersey.  

A native of Indiana, she set her first book, The Circus in Winter, in her hometown of Peru (fictionalized as Lima, Indiana) which had an interesting history as the winter home of a travelling circus.  Ms. Day's book tells the fascinating stories of circus people, townsfolk and the town itself over a timeline of many decades.  

As the Chicago Tribune notes, "Day moves back and forth in time, from the 1880s to the 1960s to the 1930s to the near present, in a story-cycle form similar to the work of Louise Erdrich and Sherwood Anderson."  For more information about Cathy Day and the book, please refer to a posting on the blog of this book group, Saturday Samplers.

The Hare with Amber Eyes

Edmund de Waal's family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, will be the topic of the next book discussion by Bernardsville Library's book group, Saturday Samplers.  Saturday Samplers meets Saturday, July 13th, at 3:30 p.m. in the small meeting room, and new members are encouraged to attend.

The book's title refers to one of the 264 netsuke which the author inherited after this collection of Japanese carvings was passed down through several generations of the fabulously wealthy Ephrussi family.  By the time de Waal inherited these small carvings in ivory and wood, the Ephrussi line living in Vienna had already suffered the irreparable loss of position, wealth, and family possessions due to Austrian anti-Semitism and Hitler's purge of European Jews.  The Ephrussi dynasty rose and fell, but the little netsuke survived intact, inspiring the author in his research and demonstrating to him that some things endure even when so much changes.

The Snake Stone: Investigator Yashim Returns

British novelist and historian Jason Goodwin has confected a truly memorable detective series featuring Yashim the eunuch, who lives in the unforgettable setting of 1830's Istanbul.  Yashim moves freely between the world of the palace - the Sultan, government functionaries, the royal harem - and the colorful and dangerous city streets crammed with spice markets, vendors, and a cross-pollination of world travellers.  Intrigue and mystery are everywhere, and Goodwin uses all the tricks in the book to keep the reader engaged.  There are red herrings, historical tidbits, murders and betrayals, and peril is always just around the corner!  

Saturday Samplers, a library book group, will discuss the second in Goodwin's Yashim series, The Snake Stone, at its next meeting Saturday, June 1st at 3:30 p.m.  Led by library staff member Evelyn Fischel, Saturday Samplers book group reads a variety of literature, non-fiction, short fiction, memoirs, teen fiction, etc., so as to broadly sample the written word. New members are welcome and more information about the book group may be found here http://saturdaysamplers.blogspot.com/.    

Driving With Dead People

Monica Holloway's memoir Driving With Dead People will be discussed on May 4th at 3:30 p.m. by Bernardsville Public Library's book group, Saturday Samplers. The observation that some people ought never to become parents certainly applies here as the author reveals a childhood of parental abuse and neglect that proved shocking to the people who knew her family and later read her memoir. Some of the abuse from her parents was verbal, some psychological, some physical, some violent, yet those in her hometown claimed they were surprised to learn of this sad family history when her book was published.  Perhaps it was a result of the times, the 1970's, when neighbors didn't interfere with the sanctity of other people's families, but it is hard to believe that such obvious abuse and neglect were overlooked.  The more shattering, hidden abuse the author and some of her siblings endured is only revealed at the end of this book.  As she notes, "I almost feel like I have climbed Mount Everest. My sister and I don’t have the shame anymore. We gave the shame back in a way, not to the public, but to the people who can accept responsibility —
and that is why I wrote the book.”

The Life of a Newspaperman

Bernardsville Public Library book group, Saturday Samplers, will attend author Mark Di Ionno's talk on Saturday, April 6th, in the Community Room of the library. The book group has just finished reading his new book, The Last Newspaperman, an acclaimed piece of historical fiction set entirely in New Jersey.  Mr. Di Ionno is an award-winning reporter for The Star-Ledger and has a lot to say about the newspaper business.  

The Last Newspaperman recounts the life and journalistic exploits of fictional reporter Fred Haines, now elderly, who reminisces about the years he spent working in tabloid journalism of the 1930's.  Four sensational episodes in New Jersey history serve as the framework upon which Fred comes to judge the nature of journalism and his own lack of scruples therein. Among those episodes were the Morro Castle fire and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. 

In covering these events, Fred must face a number of moral dilemmas which tear away at his reporter's distance and dispassion.  The reader is left to compare this era of celebrity and disaster-driven journalism with that of today's reporting, be it by newspaper or other medium.  Mr. Di Ionna will sign copies of his book following his talk at 2 p.m.  

Under the Banner of Heaven

Saturday Samplers, a Bernardsville Library book group, will discuss Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer at its next meeting this Saturday, Dec. 1, at 3:30 p.m.  New members are always welcome to attend Saturday Samplers meetings.

Under the Banner of Heaven is an examination of an extremist religion born and bred in America, that of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, an outgrowth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise know as the Mormon Church.

Centering on a savage murder by two Fundamentalist brothers in 1984, the narrative of this fascinating nonfiction book follows the Mormon faith from its inception to the splintering off of polygamous sects which have spread throughout the American southwest, Canada and Mexico.  Mormonism as practiced by the modern LDS  is also brought under the glare of Krakauer's far-reaching, well-researched book.  The intertwining of faith, zealotry and delusion makes Under the Banner of Heaven a very compelling and thought-provoking book.

Elegies for the Brokenhearted

Christie Hodgen, author of Elegies for the Brokenhearted,  is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and an award-winning writer. Her father (shown above with her daughter) is John Hodgen, a poet and college teacher.  A 2006 interview by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with Christie and her father can be read here.  As John Hodgen notes, Christie has always been quite observant, and that quality stands out as a strength in her writing.

Certainly the characters in Elegies for the Brokenhearted are beautifully observed portraits of flawed or wounded individuals leading marginal lives, lives most of us might overlook or ignore.  Her narrator, Mary Murphy, does not overlook them, but rather speaks to the ways, large and small, each of five dead people have shaped her own life. These five people may have known her for only a brief time (a college roommate) or all her life (her mother), but each one has impacted Mary’s own course through a difficult upbringing.

While never having experienced a scatter shot life of poverty and marginalization herself, Hodgen creates such memorable, well-formed characters existing on the fringes of society that the reader might think otherwise. The voices given her characters are embued with as much depth as her descriptions of them, each character perfectly identifiable by dialogue and cadence of speech.  Perhaps it was the influence of poetry in her upbringing that gave Hodgen the ability to lift heavy topics to a lyrical, captivating sphere, a place where the reader will not want to look away, but rather savor each story, each elegy.  Elegies for the Brokenhearted was recently discussed by the library book group, Saturday Samplers .  
~Evelyn Fischel~

Broken for You

Saturday Samplers book group (see Saturday Samplers blog here) will discuss Broken for You at its next meeting in the library on Saturday, June 2nd, at 3:30 p.m.  Published in 2004, Broken for You is the debut novel of Seattle-based writer Stephanie Kallos. The book received numerous positive reviews, and Kallos was named Best First Novelist in 2005 by Library Journal.  Her second book, Sing Them Home, also garnered praise for its development of characters in a physical and spiritual landscape of loss and healing.  While her stories deal with death and loss, sadness and broken lives, the author’s use of humor and whimsy lightens the load, reminding us that what is damaged (in life or in the physicality of things) might come to be mended in unexpected ways.

Trillion Dollar Shoreline, Comes With Spare Tires

Why does Manhattan turn inward onto its glittering skyscrapers and avenues of commerce when a gold coastline, a potentially magnificent waterfront, beckons from all sides?  Would its residents rush to these shorelines, partaking of promenades, water sports, and river transportation systems if accessibility were vastly improved?  New York essayist/author Phillip Lopate muses on these and many other thoughtfilled topics in his excellent 2004 publication, Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan.  Waterfront will be discussed this Saturday, May 5th, by the Saturday Samplers book group meeting at Bernardsville Library.

In Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, Phillip Lopate employs a personal and quite New York point of view while examining his very own turf and surf.  The result is a vastly enjoyable, enlightening, and  inspiring reading experience. You may even want to get up out of your chair and take a walk, perhaps not quite reaching all the forlorn, topographically dangerous spots the author trekked to in his attempt to walk around Manhattan. For as Lopate circumambulates his revered city, struggling many times to gain access to the shoreline, it becomes obvious that one of the city's greatest features - its waterfront - is also one of its least realized treasures.

Lopate begins his walkabout at the southern tip of Manhattan, working his way up the Hudson River waterfront from Battery Park.  Advancing northward, his strolls along open walkways with clear vistas of the water eventually become treacherous hikes along footpaths in the Fort Washington Park vicinity near the George Washington Bridge. There he describes "one of the loveliest, most harmonious, and yet least-known spots on the Manhattan waterfront," but to get to it on foot necessitated "my usual bullheaded method of proceeding down the vine-scrabbled hill until the Henry Hudson Highway cut me off, then made a mad dash for it.  Actually, the highway bifurcates with the park, so that you have to risk your life twice to get to the water's edge."  After doing so, he was told that there is actually a footbridge nearby, but as New York irony would have it, there are only two footbridges, separated by three miles, crossing high-speed roads. Clearly the car supplants the foot; still, Lopate soldiered on through brambles, chainlink fences, and across high-voltage train tracks to reach northernmost Inwood Park by way of the riverfront.

The author's sojourns along the East River - not a river, but an estuary - provide him many opportunities for fascinating digressions about housing projects, maritime history, and immigrant life.  Thoroughly versed in the history and literature of New York City, Lopate cites Hart Crane, Joseph Mitchell, and Herman Melville among other writers who felt the pull of the waterfront.  Of course, murderers and despairing souls also felt that pull, and over the centuries the waterfront has given up many bodies.  Medical advancements in the last century or so are visually apparent, too, as Lopate passes Roosevelt Island, home to the old Smallpox Hospital and the ruins of a lunatic asylum.  Directly opposite Roosevelt Island, one of the city's foremost hospitals,  New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, now stretches itself out along the waterfront of the Upper East Side.  Typhoid Mary, the Fulton Fish Market, Robert Moses, the city's bridges and islands, so many interesting items are touched on here.

But let us not overlook the city's utter lack of regard in places for its riverfront landscape, strewn as it is with automobile tires, clots of debris, and remnants of old industry.  Falling economies, busted budgets, and political squabbles all have taken their toll.  Lack of a cohesive and sustaining vision for the waterfront plays a part, too.  Manhattan continues to transform itself, but we are left to wonder whether the city and its inhabitants will collectively recognize the potential bounty surrounding them at their watery borders.

~Review by Evelyn Fischel~

Cleopatra

Cleopatra: a Life, by Stacy Schiff, will be the subject of Saturday Samplers next book discussion to be held this Saturday, April 14th, at 3:30 p.m.  Saturday Samplers is a Bernardsville Library book group which meets once a month in the library on a Saturday afternoon.  For more information about the book group, link to the Saturday Samplers blog.

Stacy Schiff is an award-winning biographer who met with literary success early in her career.  Born in 1961, Ms. Schiff attended Williams College.  She subsequently worked for Simon & Schuster as a writer and editor until 1990, at which point she settled into steady work as an acclaimed biographer. Her first publication in 1994, the biography of aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, was selected as a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and her biography of Vera Nabokov won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.  A well-received biography of Benjamin Franklin preceded her latest publication, Cleopatra: a Life.  Learn more about Stacy Schiff or Cleopatra: a Life on the author's Web site.

Hmm...The Help

Kathryn Stockett's first novel, The Help, has bloomed into a mega-hit regardless of criticism for its historical inaccuracies and racial insensitivity.  One blog in particular, "A Critical Review of the novel The Help," is just loaded with interesting critical commentary. Nonetheless, many readers seem to adore it for the dialogue and punchy characters inhabiting a story the author thought would never be published.  In fact, according to Stockett, the manuscript was rejected by 60 literary agents before hitting pay dirt in 2009.  Since that time, The Help has enjoyed a great run on the book club circuit, has been released as a major motion picture, and will now be discussed this Saturday by our book group, Saturday Samplers.  This Bernardsville Library book discussion group will meet on October 1st at 3:30 p.m. in the library.

Stockett states in a Daily Mail UK interview that the story came about from her memories of her own family's black maid, Demetrie.  Demetrie worked for the author's Mississippi family for 32 years, raising Kathryn and her siblings, and accompanying the family on vacations.  Still, Demetrie was never allowed to use the family's toilet, tub or dinnerware, and it never occurred to a young Stockett that this was unusual.  

In an NPR interview with Michele Norris, Kathryn Stockett states about her book, "It's fiction, but some of the facts and the settings and the backdrops - sure, that was Southern life.  Having a separate bathroom for the black domestic was just the way things were done.  Certainly, in my grandmother's time and when I was growing up, yeah, Demetrie's bathroom was on the side of the house.  It was a separate door.  Still, to this day, I've never been in that room."  Regardless, Stockett expresses her love for Demetrie and says, "Demetrie was treated like a queen, in my mind growing up, I should say."  Hmm...it all depends on your perspective.    

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.

Library Group to Discuss Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders: a novel of the plague (2001) will be discussed this Saturday, June 4th, at the Saturday Samplers book group meeting to be held at 3:30 p.m.  Saturday Samplers is a Bernardsville Library open-invitation book group led by staff member Evelyn Fischel.  Please feel welcome to attend.

Geraldine Brooks, author of Year of Wonders, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist.  Brooks grew up outside of Sydney, Australia, and resides there today with her family. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and reported for a Sydney newspaper in the early part of her career. After attending a master's program at Columbia University, she also worked for The Wall Street Journal.

Her writing demonstrates a wide-ranging interest in historical and cultural topics of an international scope. Among her books are Nine Parts of Desire: the hidden world of Islamic women, the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March, as well as People of the Book, a fictional piece based on the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. The latest novel, Caleb's Crossing, has just been published to excellent reviews and concerns the interplay of cultures, Native American and English, during the American colonial period.

Year of Wonders: a novel of the plague earned high praise for Brooks from many quarters.  The book recounts in fiction a true and tragic period in English history centering on a real town which faced a virulent outbreak of the plague.  Approximately four-fifths of the populace of the small English town of Eyam died during this outbreak in 1666, but the townspeople are remembered to this day for the extraordinary sacrifice they collectively made under the leadership of their local rector.  Brooks employs a somber and lyrical tone along with a memorable narrator to do justice to this spellbinding story.

Tom Rob Smith

London-born writer Tom Rob Smith just may be the go-to author for people who are ready to move on from Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. Smith's first book, Child 44, bears all the hallmarks of a great crime thriller - enduring suspense, characters who grow with the well-plotted storyline, and a relevant setting of historical authenticity, in this case, post-Stalinist Russia. His subsequent novel, The Secret Speech, and an upcoming publication, Agent 6, carry forward the story of Leo Stepanovich Demidov, former member of the MGB, as he and his family adapt to his new position in the Soviet State security system.

At the heart of Child 44 is the mystery behind a seemingly inexplicable and horrible series of child murders occurring across a wide area of the Soviet Union. A secretive, paranoid regime is unable to acknowledge that such crimes are possible, let alone that they may be connected. Innocent victims face torture, character assassination, gulags and misery, all so that the myth of a perfect political state might be perpetuated. Meanwhile the vicious child slaughters continue unabated.

One man, Leo Demidov, develops the conscience and courage to investigate these murders as crimes of a serial killer. As the author notes on his Web site, "How a crime is investigated is a very useful litmus test for larger forces within a society, the priorities and prejudices of that world. I guess with CHILD 44 I wanted to combine both those elements, the puzzle and the period in which this puzzle is unraveling." Although the novel's child murders are based on the true crimes of Ukrainian serial killer Andre Chikatilo, Tom Rob Smith fits them into his own web of cause and effect, and once again it is Leo Demidov who is at the center of it all.

Smith shares that he was always a reader, loved adventure stories and took them in whatever form they came - mythology, history, science fiction, television, drama or film. Perhaps the author's work as a storyliner for various British television shows following his graduation from Cambridge helped shape Child 44 into a story that would translate well cinematographically. Apparently Ridley Scott, director of "Alien" and "Blade Runner," thinks so too, as he has bought the rights to the book for a future film production.

~Evelyn Fischel~

The library book group Saturday Samplers will discuss Child 44 on April 2nd at 3:30 p.m. in the small meeting room.

Child 44

Bernardsville Library book group, Saturday Samplers, will be discussing Tom Rob Smith's exciting crime thriller Child 44 at its next meeting this Saturday, April 2, at 3:30 p.m.  Look here for a new posting coming shortly about the author and the book.

Saturday Samplers is an open-invitation book group which reads a varied selection of works, including nonfiction, fiction, short fiction and teen novels.  Library staff member Evelyn Fischel leads the group and writes a blog, Saturday Samplers, on which you can access more information about the group and its reading list.

Library Book Groups Meeting Next Week

There will be two opportunities next week to join in book discussions at Bernardsville Library. Both library book groups will be meeting to discuss their respective selections, and you are welcome to participate.

Memoirs and Coffee book group will be discussing Temple Grandin's memoir, Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with autism.  Dr. Grandin is Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University and is a noted advocate of improved lifestock handling.  She has designed numerous lifestock facilities around the world which are intended to reduce stress on animals and improve their productivity.  Dr. Grandin also has autism, and in Thinking in Pictures, she reveals what it is like to live with autusm and think in picutres rather than words. Her memoir will be discussed this Tuesday, November 30, at 10:30 a.m. in the library Community Room.

Saturday Samplers book group will discuss The Invisible Wall: a love story that broke barriers by Harry Bernstein on Saturday, December 4, at 3:30 p.m. in the Small Meeting Room.  Mr. Bernstein is a late-blooming author, having published this biography at the age of  96 in 2007.  He has subsequently written two more books.  The Invisible Wall recalls his youth in a Lancashire working class town where Jews and Christians lived on the same street, but separated themselves according to sides of the street.  The author paints a very bleak picture of his brutish father, oppressed mother, and struggling siblings, and yet he counterbalances this with a very touching love story that indeed broke barriers.

Madame X in Literature and X-Rays

As a follow-up to the Saturday Samplers book group discussion of  Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis, here are a few points of interest that we learned.

The original version of the painting, Portrait de Mme ***, which caused such a stir at the Paris Salon of 1884, was captured in only one black and white photograph, seen above. The pose of Madame Gautreau with her jeweled strap seductively slipping off her shoulder brought notoriety to a painting which was not well received for several other reasons. Both the artist and subject were duly shocked by the critical furor, and Sargent retreated to England while Madame Gautreau (Mme. X) spent the rest of her life trying to reclaim her former position in Parisian society. At some point, Sargent repainted the strap to fit her shoulder (see image below.) Still believing that it was his finest work, he later sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By coincidence, two books published in 2003 (with similar book covers) addressed the compelling story behind this famous portrait. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X used historical resources to describe Sargent's career and how it intersected with Mme. X in this one painting. While art historians know that there are many intriguing tales behind works of art, it takes a writer looking for a book subject to bring them to life for the general public. A second writer, Gioia Diliberto, chose to focus on Madame Gautreau, rather than the painting itself, in her publication, I am Madame X: a novel. This book is a highly imaginative, fictional account of an American woman born of French descent whose goal in life was to make a name for herself in belle époque France.

For interesting insights into how Sargent struggled with his composition of Madame X, repainting her profile at least eight times, please refer to the Saturday Samplers blog. There you will find a technical analysis done by the Metropolitan Museum of Art using X-radiography. You can see an X-ray image of the repainted strap as well.