Talk About Books

   “These Truths,” by Jill Lepore,  a professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a one-volume history of the United States, constructed around a traditional narrative, that takes you from the 16th to the 21st century. It tries to take in almost everything, an impossible task, but the reader would be hard-pressed to think she could have crammed more into these 932 highly readable pages. It covers the history of political thought, the fabric of American social life over the centuries, classic “great man” accounts of contingencies, surprises, decisions, ironies and character, and the vivid experiences of those previously marginalized: women, African-Americans, Native Americans, homosexuals. It encompasses interesting takes on democracy and technology, shifts in demographics, revolutions in economics and the very nature of modernity. It’s a big sweeping book, a way for us to take stock at this point in the journey, to look back, to remind us wh...

In Memphis in 1939, twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings were living a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shanty boat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. The novel is based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country. Lisa Wingate’s tale reminds us that even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets whe...

  “An extraordinary, engrossing debut… kinetic and omnivorous… Broom pushes past the baseline expectations of memoir as a genre to create an entertaining and inventive amalgamation of literary forms. Part oral history, part urban history, part celebration of a bygone way of life, The Yellow House is a full indictment of the greed, discrimination, indifference and poor city planning that led her family’s home to be wiped off the map. It is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future of the city of New Orleans, and of America writ large.”— New York Times Book Review In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventua...

“[An] extraordinary, engrossing debut… kinetic and omnivorous… [Broom] pushes past the baseline expectations of memoir as a genre to create an entertaining and inventive amalgamation of literary forms. Part oral history, part urban history, part celebration of a bygone way of life, The Yellow House is a full indictment of the greed, discrimination, indifference and poor city planning that led her family’s home to be wiped off the map. It is an instantly essential text, examining the past, present and possible future of the city of New Orleans, and of America writ large.”— New York Times Book Review In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant--the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would ev...

This is a work of historical fiction. Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Though Mi-ja and Young-sook are fictional characters. the diving women are real and have existed for generations. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point. This beautiful, thoughtful nove...

On his first night in New South Wales, in 1806, William Thornhill—Thames boatman, thief, banished convict—gazes despairingly into the forest outside his flimsy hut. A spear-wielding Aborigine appears before him, and his dejection turns to rage. All he has is his family—“those soft parcels of flesh,” sleeping behind him—and “the dirt under his bare feet, his small grip on this unknown place,” and he is not about to give them up to a naked black stranger. The Aborigine responds with equal vehemence: “Be off, be off!” The episode shows, in miniature, the project of Grenville’s magnificent novel—an unflinching exploration of modern Australia’s origins. Like the settlers, we instinctively turn away from the ugly truths behind every cleared riverbank and every posted fence. But Grenville’s psychological acuity, and the sheer gorgeousness of her descriptions of the territory being fought over, pulls us ever deeper into a time when one community’s opportunity spelled another...

Our regular monthly get-togethers have been suspended until further notice.  Meanwhile, we are thinking about other ways to enjoy books together which do not require interlibrary loans for multiple copies or gathering under one roof. *If we want to continue discussing a particular book we can try using rbDigital to get free electronic copies compliments of the VT Dept. of Libraries.   Once you set up an account using your patron number, you can download to your device (laptop, computer, phone, KindleFire) from a choice of thousands of electronic and audio books. To set up your account, go to www.guilfordfreelibraryvt.org . Select Library Services and Resources , then scroll down to the rbDigital link. Contact Leah or Cathi if you need your patron number, for help or to give feedback. This is a great resource for you, even after the library re-opens for gatherings. *Another possibility is to get together at a virtual meeting where, by video or phone, participants review a...