January's Meeting

January's meeting will be Tuesday, January 28, 2014, at 2:00 pm in room Y-233.

For January we will be re-visiting a classic, Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

From The Publisher:

Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

First published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is a classic novel set in the future when books forbidden by a totalitarian regime are burned. The hero, a book burner, suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas that cry out silently when put to the torch.

November's Book

November's meeting will be Tuesday, December 3, at 2:00 pm in room Y-233.

November's Book will be The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg.

From Publisher's Weekly:

Erica Falck, a local-girl-makes-good writer from the tiny resort town of Fjallbacka, Sweden, stumbles onto a crime scene involving a close childhood friend. Erica is struggling to meet her publisher's deadline on a biography she no longer finds stimulating when her writer's instinct is piqued by her friend's mysterious death. At various points just about everyone in town is implicated, but Erica's senses keep her on the killer's trail, and the result is an ending that comes out of nowhere. Läckberg clearly has a gift for laying out an intricate plot and building suspense. Her list of characters is long and complex but not overwhelming, and she manages successfully to weave in a variety of subplots. VERDICT The winner of several Swedish writing awards, Läckberg has become the best-selling Swedish novelist on record. More Murder She Wrote than noir, her U.S. debut (and the first entry in a seven-book series) will likely appeal to any lover of more lighthearted mysteries. Readers who enjoy Louise Penny's small-town atmosphere may want to give Läckberg a shot. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 2/1/10.]—Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR

October's Book

The October Greedy Reader's Meeting will be Tuesday, October 29 at 2:00 in room Y-233.

The October book is The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman.

From Publishers Weekly:
In Stedman’s deftly crafted debut, Tom Sherbourne, seeking constancy after the horrors of WWI, takes a lighthouse keeper’s post on an Australian island, and calls for Isabel, a young woman he met on his travels, to join him there as his wife. In peaceful isolation, their love grows. But four years on the island and several miscarriages bring Isabel’s seemingly boundless spirit to the brink, and leave Tom feeling helpless until a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living child. Isabel convinces herself—and Tom—that the baby is a gift from God. After two years of maternal bliss for Isabel and alternating waves of joy and guilt for Tom, the family, back on the mainland, is confronted with the mother of their child, very much alive. Stedman grounds what could be a far-fetched premise, setting the stage beautifully to allow for a heart-wrenching moral dilemma to play out, making evident that “Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot ’em both, and then it’s too late.” Most impressive is the subtle yet profound maturation of Isabel and Tom as characters. Agent: Susan Armstrong, Conville & Walsh. (Aug.)

September's Book

The September Greedy Reader meeting will be Tuesday, September 24 in Y-233.

The book for September is The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng.

From Publisher's Weekly:

This remarkable debut saga of intrigue and akido flashes back to a darkly opulent WWII-era Malaya. Phillip Hutton, 72, lives in serene Penang comfort, occasionally training students as an akido master "teacher of teachers." A visit from Michiko Murakami sends him spiraling back into his past, where he grows up the alienated half-British, half-Chinese son of a wealthy Penang trader in the years before WWII. When Hutton's father and three siblings leave him to run the family company one summer, he befriends a mysterious Japanese neighbor named Mr. Endo. Japan is on the opposing side of the coming war, but Endo paradoxically opts to train Hutton in the ways of aikido, in what both men come to see as the fulfillment of a prophecy that has haunted them for several lifetimes. When the Japanese army invades Malaya, chaos reigns, and Phillip makes a secret, very profitable deal. He cannot, however, offset the costs of his friendship with Endo. Eng's characters are as deep and troubled as the time in which the story takes place, and he draws on a rich palette to create a sprawling portrait of a lesser explored corner of the war. Hutton's first-person narration is measured, believable and enthralling. (May)

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July's Book

June's Meeting will be Tuesday, July 23, at 2:00 pm in room Y-233.

June's Book will be Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

From the Library Journal:
When librarian Esther Hammerhans decides to rent a room in her London flat to Mr. Chartwell, she has no idea what she's allowing into her solitary life. Mr. Chartwell, aka Black Pat, is, you see, a dog—a huge, odiferous, walking, talking physical mess of an animal, who inexplicably exudes a most charming, seductive manner. He has, he confides to Esther, a final job to do at the home of Winston and Clementine Churchill in nearby Kent. History has noted Sir Winston's long battle with depression, his bête noire as he called it, the "black dog" that accompanied him throughout his life. So what does Black Pat now want with Esther? How will she avoid falling prey to his dark, hulking presence? Please, willingly suspend disbelief and allow Hunt's vivid imagination to take you on this exuberant funhouse ride through a week in the lives of Esther, Winston, two matchmakers, the easygoing love interest, and the buttoned-up library director at the House of Commons. VERDICT Already published in Hunt's home country, Great Britain, this debut novel cleverly combines historical detail, a marvelously subtle sense of humor, and the wit of J.K. Rowling to give readers a quirky assortment of characters they can root for with abandon.—Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL

June's Book

June's Book

It is time for something fun! The book for June is The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella.

The next Greedy Reader meeting will be Tuesday, June 25 at 2:00 pm in Y-233.

From the Publisher:

Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership. Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer—and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope—and finds love—is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake. But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?

May's Book

The May Greedy Reader meeting will be Tuesday, May 28 at 2:00 pm.

The Book for May is A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchey.

From the Publisher:

Stoneybridge is a small town on the west coast of Ireland where all the families know one another. When Chicky Starr decides to take an old, decaying mansion set high on the cliffs overlooking the windswept Atlantic Ocean and turn it into a restful place for a holiday by the sea, everyone thinks she is crazy. Helped by Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house) and Orla, her niece (a whiz at business), Chicky is finally ready to welcome the first guests to Stone House’s big warm kitchen, log fires, and understated elegant bedrooms. John, the American movie star, thinks he has arrived incognito; Winnie and Lillian are forced into taking a holiday together; Nicola and Henry, husband and wife, have been shaken by seeing too much death practicing medicine; Anders hates his father’s business, but has a real talent for music; Miss Nell Howe, a retired schoolteacher, criticizes everything and leaves a day early, much to everyone’s relief; the Walls are disappointed to have won this second-prize holiday in a contest where first prize was Paris; and Freda, the librarian, is afraid of her own psychic visions.

June's Book - The Undomestic Goddess Sophie Kinsella

July's Book - Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

March's Book

The Book for March is Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

The next Greedy Reader meeting will be Tuesday, March 24.

From Library Journal - Millard (The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey) presents a dual biography of the 20th U.S. President and his assassin. James A. Garfield and Charles Guiteau were both born into hardscrabble Midwestern circumstances. While Garfield made himself into a teacher, Union army general, congressman, and President, Guiteau, who was most likely insane, remained at the margins of life, convinced he was intended for greatness. When he failed to receive a position in Garfield's administration, he became convinced that God meant him to kill the President. At a railway station in the capital, Guiteau shot Garfield barely four months into his term. Garfield lingered through the summer of 1881, with the country hanging on the news of his condition. In September he died of infection, apparently due to inadequate medical care. Millard gives readers a sense of the political and social life of those times and provides more detail on Guiteau's life than is given in Ira Rutkow's James A. Garfield. The format is similar to that in The President and the Assassin, Scott Miller's book on President McKinley and Leon Czolgosz. VERDICT Recommended for presidential history buffs and students of Gilded Age America. [See Prepub Alert, 3/7/11.]—Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg

February's Book

The Greedy Reader Selection for February is Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller.

The next Greedy Reader Meeting will be Tuesday, February 26 @ 2:00 pm in room Y-233.

From Library Journal - If you loved Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight—and I certainly did—you'll want to bury yourself in this sequel. Fuller here focuses more fully on her mother, Nicola, who was born on the Isle of Skye but raised in Kenya and was passionately devoted to family, land, and her belief in the goodness of animals. Then came both personal tragedy and continental upheaval, as Nicola and husband Tim found themselves constantly on the run with their old world collapsing and a new world looming. Now they've found some peace sitting under their Tree of Forgetfulness, a tradition taken from the locals, who gather under such a tree when disputes are to be settled. Everything that made Dogs wonderful reading seems to be here, too: the deep comprehension of sorrow, certainly, but also the dead-on portraits, leavening wit, and, finally, generosity. Get the reading group guide and go to town