New York City Museum Mile
Bus Trip, October 29
Travel with us to New York City and visit dozens of museums.
Currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio
Max Beckmann in New York
The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker:
Transitional Object (Psychobarn)
Diane Arbus: In the Beginning
Printing a Child’s World
Phil Collins: How to Make a Refugee
Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven
And much, much more!
The bus will leave the Montour Falls Library at 6:00 AM
and drop off everyone at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The return trip will leave the Met at 5:30 PM.
The trip is $75 per person.
Make checks payable to Montour Falls Library.
Contact the library soon to reserve a spot.
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Montour Falls Farmers Market
The market has launched!
Every Thursday from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
May 5 through October
300 West Main Street in Montour Falls
This is an agriculture-based market,
providing our community with healthy, fresh, local, and affordable food.
Local farmers will offer vegetables, fruits, meats, and cheeses.
Food trucks will provide hot meals and treats.
Entertainment, including live music and story time for the children, will be scheduled.
www.montourfallsfarmersmarket.com
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Doolin O’Dey
A Celtic Dance Night
Doolin O’Dey presents an exciting mix of traditional and original Celtic-inspired music. Instrumentation of violin, guitar, celtic whistles, octave mandolin, uilleann pipes, and keyboard combine to make your listening experience unforgettable. Jig, aire, reel, or waltz, and you’ll be drawn into the captivating arrangements of this band.
October 7 at 6:00
at the Montour Falls Library.
First Friday Concert Series
We ask a $10 donation to support the musicians and the library.
At 1:00, local author Peter Mantius will read from his book Shell Game, discuss it, and answer questions. Join us for the first in a new monthly local author series.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Reading Group will meet to discuss The Forest Unseen by David Haskell. A grand tour of nature in all its profundity, written with remarkable grace and empathy. A biologist uses a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature’s path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life. Beginning with simple observations–a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter, the first blossom of spring wildflowers–Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology, ecology, and poetry, explaining the science binding together ecosystems that have cycled for thousands sometimes millions of years.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. The story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest. Zorba, a Greek working man, is a larger-than-life character, energetic and unpredictable. He accompanies the unnamed narrator to Crete to work in the narrator’s lignite mine, and the pair develops a singular relationship. The two men couldn’t be further apart: The narrator is cerebral, modest, and reserved; Zorba is unfettered, spirited, and beyond the reins of civility. Over the course of their journey, he becomes the narrator’s greatest friend and inspiration and helps him to appreciate the joy of living. He responds to all that life offers him with passion, whether he’s supervising laborers at a mine, confronting mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the tales of his past adventures, or making love.
At 9:00 am, meet on the library steps and walk through historic Havana along the Chemung Canal with local historian Gary Emerson.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss California by Edan Lepucki. The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they’ve left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can’t reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they’ve built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she’s pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, they set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. A major new novel from one of science fiction’s most powerful voices, Aurora tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers. Our voyage from Earth began generations ago. Now, we approach our new home: AURORA.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss The Swap by Megan Shull. With one random wish, Jack and Ellie are living life in each other’s shoes. He’s her. And she’s him. Ellie assumed popular guys didn’t worry about body image, being perfect, or talking to girls, but acting like you’re cool with everything is tougher than it looks. Jack thought girls had it easy—no fights with bullies, no demanding dads, no power play— but facing mean girls at sleepovers and getting grilled about your period is way harder than taking a hit to the face at sports practice. Now they’re dealing with each other’s middle school dramas locker room teasing, cliques, video game battles, bra shopping, and a slew of hilariously awkward moments until they hopefully switch back.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan. They have always scared him in the past: The Rangers, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger’s apprentice. What he doesn’t yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Reading Group will meet to discuss The Meadow by James Galvin. In discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider’s web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doing he reveals an experience that is part of our heritage and mythology. The Meadow evokes a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse, the legendary military leader of the Oglala Sioux whose personal power and social nonconformity contributed to his reputation as being strange, fought in many famous battles, including the Little Bighorn, and held out tirelessly against the U.S. government’s efforts to confine the Lakotas to reservations. Finally, in the spring of 1877, he surrendered, only to meet a violent death. More than a century later Crazy Horse continues to hold a special place in the hearts and minds of his people.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner. The Kings family has lived on Loosewood Island for three hundred years, blessed with the bounty of the sea. But for the Kings, this blessing comes with a curse: the loss of every firstborn son. Now, Woody Kings, the leader of the island’s lobster fishing community and the family patriarch, teeters on the throne, and Cordelia, the oldest of Woody’s three daughters, stands to inherit the crown. To do so, however, she must defend her island from meth dealers from the mainland while navigating sibling rivalry and the vulnerable nature of her own heart when she falls in love with her sternman.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley. Jake lives at the Makepeace Institute of Integrated Dragon Studies in Smokehill National Park. There are five million acres of the Smokehill wilderness, and the endangered dragons rarely show themselves. Jake’s never seen one except at a distance. But then, on his first overnight solo in the park, he meets a dragon – and she is dying. More than that, she has just given birth, and one of the babies is still alive.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss Ash by Malinda Lo. Ash is in some ways a retelling of the Cinderella story, but it’s also a commentary upon enchantments. Will Ash succumb to the allure of the mysterious stranger? What does her late mother’s involvement in the old ways of magic have to do with her current situation? And will she be doomed to spend eternity away from the one she truly loves? Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. Feel the heat, fear, and uncertainty as you walk with 11-year-old Salva, who, in 1985, is fleeing his homeland of Southern Sudan. Linda Sue Park has crafted a gripping story of a ‘Lost Boy,’ all the more remarkable because it is based on a true story. Intertwined with Salva’s story is that of 11-year-old Nya, from a rival tribe in Southern Sudan. This ‘long walk’ will take readers into a troubled country, but a country still filled with hope due to people like Salva. This is a book for the reader who wants to look behind the headlines.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray. The author grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by the hedge at the edge of the road and by hulks of old cars, stacks of blown-out tires, and primeval jumbles of rusted metal. This memoir tells how a childhood spent in rural isolation — living in the country but not even knowing how to swim — grew into a passion to save the almost vanished longleaf pine ecosystem that existed before the region was ever called the South.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens. “Magic, humor, enchantment, and beauty” were among the litany of praise that greeted this collection when it was first published in 1920. Never since has Stephens’ marvelous skill in narrating the great legends of Ireland been equaled. Here is a feast of fantasy for all ages, for the young at heart of every age, accompanied by the superbly evocative illustrations of Arthur Rackham.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar. This novel tells the story of sisters Vanessa and Virginia Stephens, later to become Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. Vanessa, an emerging painter, tells their stories in her journal, accompanied by the letters and telegrams of their families, husbands, and the many brilliant artists and painters in their circle. It is a story of art, literature, betrayal, emotional upheaval, and, above all, the many complicated forms love takes. Set against the backdrop of Edwardian England, a time of sweeping social transformations, this novel is a moving portrait of a brilliant family.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu. In this collection of award-winning stories, the author covers everything from whimsical fantasy to re-imaginings of Chinese myths to hard science fiction and alternate history, all handled with a deft intelligence, generous characterization, and a real ear for prose. Read in wonder a letter written from a mother to her son, an alien history scratched on the surface of an irradiated planet, myths of origin transforming to keep up with humanity’s phase-shifting, and much, much more.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. Eleanor doesn’t have much going for her. Life with her mom and stepdad is scary, and the kids at her new school have singled her out for torment. Into this reality comes Park, who is just trying to keep his head down and not make waves. With humor and unflinching candor, Rowell propels readers through a story of first love and the courage it takes to keep going when all the odds are against you.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by the dangerous dragon Smaug. Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum. This is an irresistible, glorious account of a magnificent adventure, filled with suspense and seasoned with quiet humor.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Voices in the Ocean by Susan Casey. With a combination of personal reporting, intense scientific research, and evocative prose, Casey presents a thrilling book about the other intelligent life on the planet. Humans have always felt a kinship with the sleek and beautiful dolphin, an animal whose playfulness, sociability, and intelligence seem like an aquatic mirror of mankind. Recently, we have learned that dolphins recognize themselves in reflections, count, grieve, adorn themselves, feel despondent, rescue one another (and humans), deduce, infer, seduce, form cliques, throw tantrums, and call themselves by name. Visit the world of the dolphin, from the sinister to the wondrous.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character — lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi. Kabul, 2007: The Taliban rules the streets. With a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can rarely leave the house or attend school. Their only hope lies in the ancient Afghan custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a son until she is of marriageable age. As a boy, she has the kind of freedom that was previously unimaginable . . . freedom that will transform her forever.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works and Vonnegut at his very best.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss Downsiders by Neal Shusterman. Beneath the sewer grates and manholes of the city lies a strange and secret world called the Downside. Every Downsider knows that it’s forbidden to go Topside, and most fear a collision of the two worlds. But fourteen-year-old Talon is curious about what goes on above ground, and one day he ventures out in search of medicine for his ailing sister. There he meets Lindsay, who is as curious about Talon’s world as he is about hers. When she finds out that this fantastic world is not all it appears to be, she is determined to tell Talon the truth. Can the truth save the Downside, or will it destroy an entire civilization?
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens. Chock-full of giants and dwarves, heroes and villains, and all of the wizarding magic we’ve grown to love. When three siblings discover a book with magical properties, all the hardships of their orphaned past are overshadowed by the trials that lie ahead. Each sibling uses his or her unique strengths to overcome great obstacles, including time itself, and finds the courage to save the lives of others. If the ancient prophesy is correct, it is up to them to set things right.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. This controversial, erotic celebration of life was banned, burned, and the subject of a landmark obscenity trial. It long scandalized society with its sexually explicit descriptions of lovemaking, its bold use of four-letter words that were considered vulgar, and a storyline in which the lovers were of different social stations. The paralyzed and callous Clifford Chatterley is pitted against Constance, his wife, a lonely, indecisive woman trapped in a sterile marriage, and her persuasive lover, Oliver Mellors, the robust and blunt-spoken gamekeeper of her husband’s estate.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Untamed by Will Harlan. Carol Ruckdeschel wrestles alligators, eats roadkill, rides horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built by hand in an island wilderness. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high school diploma becomes an outspoken advocate on a celebrated but divisive island? Untamed is the story of an American original standing her ground and fighting for what she believes in, no matter the cost.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin. As recovery from World War II begins, expat American Nora Tours travels from her home in southern France to London in search of her sixteen-year-old daughter. There, she unexpectedly meets up with famous model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Nora is racked with the fear that her efforts to survive under the Vichy regime may have cost her daughter’s life. Lee suffers from what she witnessed as a war correspondent photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Will Nora’s reunion with Lee give them a chance to forgive past betrayals… and break years of silence to forge a meaningful connection as women who have shared the best and the worst that life can offer?
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Follow observant wallflower Charlie as he charts a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. Sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss The Mapmaker’s War by Ronlyn Domingue. Aoife is allowed a rare apprenticeship to become her kingdom’s mapmaker, tasked with charting the entire domain. Traveling beyond its borders, she finds a secretive people who live in peace, among great wealth. They claim to protect a mythic treasure, one connected to the creation of the world. When Aoife reports their existence to her kingdom, the community is targeted as a threat. Aoife is exiled for treason and finds refuge among the very people who had been declared her enemy. On this most important of journeys, there is no map to guide her.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility. All he knows is a miserable life with his horrible aunt and uncle and their abominable son. Harry’s room is a tiny closet, and he hasn’t had a birthday party in eleven years. But all that is about to change when an owl delivers a letter with an invitation to an incredible place that Harry will find unforgettable. For it’s there that he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic, but a great destiny that’s been waiting for him… if Harry can survive the encounter.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss The Owl Who Liked Sitting on Caesar by Martin Windrow. Adorable and the size of a corncob, but with knife-sharp talons, Mumble the owl became Windrow’s closest, if at times unpredictable, companion, first in a South London flat and later in the more owl-friendly Sussex countryside. Windrow recalls with wry humor their finer moments as well as the reactions of incredulous neighbors, the awkwardness of buying unskinned rabbit at Harrods Food Hall, and the grievous sense of loss when Mumble nearly escapes.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling upriver into the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic, wraith-like figure. Marlow’s discovery of how Kurtz has gained his position of power over the local people involves him in a radical questioning, not only of his own nature and values, but of those that underpin Western civilization itself.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash. The voices that bear witness to the events in Cash’s moving novel are haunting in their telling of a tale of innocent mistakes and evil incarnate in a small North Carolina mountain community. A charismatic preacher has a parish in his thrall. Mysterious goings on, both inside and outside of the shrouded little church, lead to tragedy for young Jess and his mute older brother, Stump.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. It is a tale of the rebellion of the Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. It is the tale of the disparate people–a computer technician, a vigorous young female agitator, and an elderly academic–who become the rebel movement’s leaders. And it is the story of Mike, the supercomputer whose sentience is known only to this inner circle.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. In America’s Gulf Coast region, grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and he faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it’s worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss Nightbird by Alice Hoffman. Only true friendship can break an ancient curse. Twig lives in Sidwell, where people whisper that fairy tales are real. After all, her town is rumored to hide a monster. And two hundred years ago, a witch placed a curse on Twig’s family that was meant to last forever. But this summer, everything will change when the red moon rises. It’s time to break the spell.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. A hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel’s intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow. When Gertie Nevels, a strong and self-reliant matriarch, follows her husband to Detroit from their countryside home in Kentucky, she learns she will have to fight desperately to keep her family together and to preserve their deep-rooted values amidst the turmoil of war and industrialization.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. The authors weave together the stories of two endearing characters — an orphan who grows up to be a decorated World War I hero turned Prohibition revenuer and a bootlegging firecracker of a woman who yearns for her lost child. Add the setting of a town on the brink of destruction by deluge and some unsavory characters looking to profit from calamity, and the reader will be swept away by their story.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss Among Others by Jo Walton. At once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment. Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins. But her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. Then her mother tried to bend the spirits to dark ends, and Mori was forced to confront her in a magical battle.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan. Henry Atherton thinks his life is spinning out of control, but nothing prepares him for the invisible portal in old man Fogarty’s backyard… and the unexpected stranger who comes through it, Pyrgus Malvae, crown prince of the Faerie realm. Henry and Pyrgus come from very different worlds, but it may be up to Henry to save all of Faerie from being conquered by the Nightside, even if it means crossing over to a magical realm where nothing is ever what it seems… and no one can be trusted.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. When Gregor falls through a grate in the laundry room of his apartment building, he hurtles into the dark Underland, where spiders, rats, and cockroaches coexist uneasily with humans. A prophecy foretells that Gregor has a role to play in the Underland’s uncertain future. Gregor wants no part of it — until he realizes it’s the only way to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Cathedral of the Wild by Boyd Varty. The author grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, a place where man and nature strive for balance, where perils exist alongside wonders. Founded more than eighty years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty’s father and uncle, visionaries of the restoration movement. But it wasn’t just a sanctuary for the animals; it was also a place for a ravaged land to flourish again and for the human spirit to be restored. When Nelson Mandela was released after twenty-seven years of imprisonment, he came to the reserve to recover.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. A pioneer in the genre of science fiction writing, Jules Verne possessed an uncanny ability to imagine — often with startling accuracy — the future possibilities of science. In this classic novel, first published in 1864, the author introduces readers to Otto Lidenbrock, a professor of geology who ventures into a fantastical world within an extinct Icelandic volcano.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure. In 1942, the city of Paris was overrun by German soldiers looking for Jews. There were some Parisians who wanted to hide the Jews, and some who wanted to turn them in. In the middle was Lucien Bernard, one of the few men capable of assisting either side if he so chose. Lucien was an architect who built secret hiding spaces for Jews in old homes. When something went terribly wrong, Lucien was forced to rethink his dedication and come up with a way to make amends in this powerful and gripping story.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Mitchell takes six completely different storylines, written in six distinct genre styles — from pulp mystery novel to pidgin English-laden sci-fi — set in six completely different time periods ranging from the 1800s South Pacific to far into a post-apocalyptic future, and chops them up and blends them to form one seamless, intricate, awe-inspiring saga of humanity.
At 5:00 pm, our young adult book group will meet to discuss I Crawl through It by A. S. King. Four teenagers are on the verge of exploding. The anxieties they face at every turn have nearly pushed them to the point of surrender: senseless high-stakes testing, the lingering damage of past trauma, the buried grief and guilt of tragic loss. They are desperate to cope, but no one is listening. So they will lie. They will split in two. They will turn inside out. They will even build an invisible helicopter to fly themselves far away… but nothing releases the pressure. Because, as they discover, the only way to truly escape their world is to fly right into it.
At 7:00 pm, longtime local teacher and author Frank Steber will discuss Civil War era painter and Watkins Glen resident James Hope.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss Holes by Louis Sachar. Stanley Yelnats has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending every day digging holes. It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize the boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment and redemption.
At 5:00 pm, our new young adult book group will meet to discuss Alex Crow by Andrew Smith. Skillfully blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, the author chronicles the story of Ariel, a refugee who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Ariel’s story is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century… and a depressed, bionic reincarnated crow.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Greedy, piratical Colonel Pyncheon builds his mansion on ill-gotten ground, setting the stage for generations of suffering. Years later, a country cousin and an enigmatic young boarder attempt to reverse the tide of misfortunes surrounding the house in Hawthorne’s evocative blend of mystery and romance, of “lives caught in the common fire of history.”
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss Euphoria by Lily King. Loosely based on Margaret Mead’s time in Papua New Guinea, this engaging, insightful novel is about cutting-edge research and revolutionary ideas, but inevitably it is also about the complications within the scholars’ relationships when societal norms are stripped away, and love, greed, jealousy, and control are left unfettered. Artfully narrated, King’s novel offers a unique view into these rich and complicated characters.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss The Martian by Andy Weir. Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there. His mental and physical struggles to survive are a crash course in botany, mechanics, and the will to endure. This taut, cerebral debut thriller introduces readers to the only kind of alien we have yet to encounter: ourselves.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss Walden by Henry David Thoreau. By virtue of its casual, off-handedly brilliant wisdom and the easy splendor of its nature writing, Thoreau’s account of his adventure in self-reliance on the shores of a pond in Massachusetts is one of the signposts by which the modern mind has located itself in an increasingly bewildering world. Deeply sane, invigorating in its awareness of humanity’s place in the moral and natural order, Walden represents the progressive spirit of nineteenth-century America at its eloquent best.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jodan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears. And as she hurtles toward danger in the cold far North, Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: she alone is destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle.
At 6:00 pm, the Classics Reading Group will meet to discuss “Out of Africa” by Isak Dinesen, a true account of the author’s life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives; of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom; of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner; of primitive festivals; of big game that were her near neighbors–lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes–and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful.
At 6:00 pm, the Havana Book Club will meet to discuss “The Water Knife” by Paolo Bacigalupi. Imagine an America so scraped away by ecological disasters and the brutal struggle to control the water supply that results in a refugee crisis in the Southwest rivaling those that have devastated third world nations. This book moves like a high-octane thriller but includes a wealth of warnings about where America and the world at large may be headed: a dark future where the brutal reality of everyday survival makes people, corporations, and governments do terrible things.
At 6:00 pm, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club will meet to discuss “The Fifth Wave” by Rick Yancey. After the first wave, only darkness remains. After the second, only the lucky escape. And after the third, only the unlucky survive. After the fourth wave, only one rule applies: trust no one. Now, it’s the dawn of the fifth wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from beings who only look human. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope, but Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.
At 6:00 pm, the Environmental Literature Book Club will meet to discuss “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald. This is a superbly crafted memoir, incredibly original in its depth and visceral impact. The author swings back and forth between her own desire to train a goshawk and her research of that same need documented by T.H. White. Self-deprecating humor vies with wonder and grief as Macdonald manages to make the reader see, hear, and feel every aspect of this incredible journey. A marvelous read.
At 3:30 pm, the middle school reading group will meet to discuss “The Thief Lord” by Cornelia Funke. Two orphaned brothers, Prosper and Bo, have run away to Venice, where crumbling canals and misty alleyways shelter a secret community of street urchins. Leader of this motley crew of lost children is a clever, charming boy with a dark history of his own: He calls himself the Thief Lord. Prosper and Bo relish their new “family” and life of petty crime. But their cruel aunt and a bumbling detective are on their trail. And posing an even greater threat to the boys’ freedom is something from a forgotten past: a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself.
