November 2026 Book, The Personal Librarian

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at Guilford Free Library at 5:30 pm. All are welcome to join the discussion. To request a copy of the current selection, email the library at staff@guilfordfreelibraryvt.org or call 802-257-4603.

 The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is the remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian - who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true. 

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret she must protect at all costs. She was born Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white. Her complexion is dark because she is African American.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

November-December Book 2025, Any Human Heart

Image
Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at the Guilford Free Library. Current meeting time is 5:30.  This discussion is scheduled for December 17th to provide extra reading time for this 498 page book. In William Boyd's  Any Human Heart, the fictional writer,  Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. From his early childhood in Montevideo, son of an English corned beef executive and his Uraguayan secretary, through his years at a Norfolk public school and Oxford, Mountstuart traces his haphazard development as a writer. Early and easy success is succeeded by a long half-century of mediocrity, disappointments and setbacks, both personal and professional, leading him to multiple failed marriages, internment, alcoholism, and abject poverty. Mountstuart's sorry tale is also the story of a British way of life in inexorable decline, as his journey takes in the Bloomsbury set, the General Str...
Read more

June 2025 Book, In the Garden of Beasts

Image
  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at Guilford Free Library at 6:30. Copies of the current month's selection are made available to patrons upon request. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Erik Larson begins his nonfiction account of Berlin in 1933 when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person...
Read more

July 2025 Book, So Brave, Young, and Handsome

Image
Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. All are welcome to request a copy of the month's selection and join the discussion  In 1915 Minnesota, Monte Becket—“a man fading, a disappointer of persons”—has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives a simple life with his loving wife and whipsmart son. But when he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale, a new world of opportunity and experience presents itself. Glendon has spent years in obscurity, but the guilt he harbors for abandoning his wife, Blue, over two decades ago, has finally lured him from hiding. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Glendon aims to travel back into his past—heading to California to seek Blue’s forgiveness. Beguiled and inspired, Monte soon finds himself leaving behind his own family to embark for the unruly West with his fugitive guide—a journey that will test the depth of his loyalties, the inviolability of his morals, and ...
Read more