Upcoming Book Discussions
New members are welcome to join any book group without registering. For assistance or to get a copy of a book, please visit the Customer Service Desk or call (812) 949-3523.
#BookTalk
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
6:00 - 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Applegate Room
Do you love reading and talking about books? Join us to socialize and discuss a recently popular title each month! We meet in person at the Central Branch of the Floyd County Library (180 W. Spring Street.) You can pick up a print copy of the book at the Upper Customer Service Desk, or download an ebook from the Indiana Digital Library. Don’t miss this opportunity to share your thoughts and insights with other readers.
This month:
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
Dusting Off the Classics
Tuesday, May 7, 2024
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Auditorium or online via Zoom
Been meaning to read more of the classics? Want to revisit books you haven’t read since you were in school? What is a "classic" anyway? Join us to read and discuss a different classic book each month with leader Christopher Proctor, IU Southeast Librarian. This event is hosted with a hybrid model-- come to the library Auditorium if you prefer in person events, but we’ll email you a link to join the discussion on Zoom. Print copies of the books are available at the Upper Customer Service desk.
This month:
The Bhagavad Gita
This early epic poem recounts the conversation between the warrior and his charioteer, the divine manifestation. It sets out the important lessons to learn to change the outcome of the war in the moments before a great battle that the warrior fights, and culminates in revealing the true cosmic warrior and counselling him to search for the universal perfection of life. This most important work ranges from yoga postures to dense moral discussion and serves as a practical guide to living well.
Monday Mystery Book Club
Monday, May 13, 2024
6:00 - 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Applegate Meeting Room
Do you love a good mystery? Join us for a lively discussion of a different mystery book each month. Print copies of the books are available at the Upper Customer Service desk.
This month:
The Sherlockian by Graham Moore
"When literary researcher Harold White is inducted into the preeminent Sherlock Holmes enthusiast society, The Baker Street Irregulars, he expects good sherry and stimulating conversation. He receives a bonus: the world's leading expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announces that he's found the author's fabled "missing diary." But when the man is found murdered in his hotel room - it is Harold who must take up the search:both for the killer, and for the invaluable missing diary. With only his immense knowledge of the Doylean canon-and the help of a beautiful young journalist-Harold embarks on a dangerous translatlantic investigation, making deductions worthy of his literary idol. At the same time, author Graham Moore tells the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, a story which has remained hidden in Conan Doyle's missing diary for a hundred years. In an attempt to prove himself the better of his most famous character, Conan Doyle hunts a serial killer through the streets of 1890's London. But what he finds is that in a world of real crime, and real evil, the world does not need Arthur Conan Doyle - the world needs Sherlock Holmes."
A More Perfect Union
Monday, May 13, 2024
6:00-7:30 PM
New Albany Central Library Auditorium
In this book club for adults, we dive into different civic topics as we strive to be part of a "more perfect union". Topics will vary, but we aim for a neighborly discussion as we unpack some of the issues facing us as a society today. Print copies of the book are available at the Upper Customer Service Desk. This book group offers a free copy of the book to keep, while supplies last.
This month:
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
Read Between the Spines Book Group
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
5:30 - 6:30 PM
Galena Digital Branch
6954 Hwy 150
Read great books and make new friends at this new book discussion at the Galena Digital Branch. Print copies of the book will be available at the Galena Digital Branch.
This month:
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means "slave girl," begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
Reading the Rainbow
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
6:00 - 7:00 PM
IU Southeast Library or online via Zoom
4201 Grant Line Rd.
Join us to discuss an LGBTQ+ themed book each month with leader Christopher Proctor, IU Southeast Librarian. This discussion is open to all adults; members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies are welcome. Print copies of the books are available at the Floyd County Library Upper Customer Service Desk and at the IU Southeast Library. If you'd like to attend online via Zoom, register at the link below to receive the Zoom link.
This month:
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb