Talk About Books

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. There is a zoom option available, though most people are attending in person. FRIEDRICH ENGELS once said that he learned more about postrevolutionary French society from Balzac than from ''all the professed historians, economists and statisticians of the period together.'' The same might be said of slavery in America and Edward P. Jones who writes about its history not as if it were fixed in time, safely over and done with, but as if anything could happen in the chaos of the moment. The Known World opens with the death of a master of 33 slaves in antebellum Virginia. None of his property grows teary-eyed, though, at the news that Henry Townsend has died. They surely don't know that when he obtained his first slave he wanted to be ''the kind of shepherd master God had intended,'' someone who would provide ''good food for his slaves, no whi...

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library; in person or via zoom. What are animals feeling and experiencing? Why do they feel so compelling and close?  Who are you?  Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, readers travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, and finally plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in the crystalline waters of the Pacific Northwest. Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through ...

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. We enjoy meeting in person, but there is always a zoom option available. Books for the following month are selected by those present at the meeting. Louise Erdrich bases this novel on a real person. She uses the letters written by her grandfather which detail his resistance against termination bills meant to assimilate Objiwe people into broader American society through a variety of means, including the end of federal recognition of the sovereignty of indigenous tribes.  Erdrich has referred to the letters as "[...] beautiful, full of humor and storytelling." She based The Night Watchman on his loving personality and commitment to his tribe. This historical fiction provides detailed descriptions of surroundings and relationships between characters. Alongside the political story line, readers follow a variety of other characters through daily life on the reservation, family trage...

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month  in person at Guilford Free Library or via zoom at 6:30. American Dirt is the story of Lydia Quixano Perez, an Acapulco bookshop owner, who is forced to flee her home with her son after her family is murdered by a drug cartel.   Lydia has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library and via zoom. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War is a historic nonfiction narrative Nathaniel Philbrick. The narrative outlines the reasons for the Mayflower’s historic voyage, before giving a realistic account of the Pilgrims in the New World during their first fifty-five years. Perhaps most important in Philbrick’s assessment is the tenuous relationship between the Pilgrims and their Native American neighbors; with this cooperative relationship in mind, Philbrick investigates several other, “superficial” assessments of the Pilgrims, including the view that the Pilgrims were “good” while their Native American neighbors were “bad”. Ultimately, Philbrick shows the reader that this particular episode in American history was not black and white; the history of beginnings never is. Mayflower highlights how the Pilgrims and their neighbors, the Pokanokets, came to establish a relationship based...

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library and via zoom. In the ruins of Germany in 1945, at the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him. In America in 2010, Henry’s niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after she experiences a devastating act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript. She becomes determined to discover what it is and to return it to its rightful owner, a journey that will challenge her preconceptions about herself and her family’s history—and also offer her an opportunity to finally make peace with the past. In Berlin, Germany, in 1783, amid the city’s glittering salons where aristocrats and commoners, Christians and Jews, mingle freely despite simmering anti-Semitism, Sara Itzig ...

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library and via zoom.   Amsterdam is the story of a euthanasia pact between two friends, a composer and a newspaper editor, whose relationship spins into disaster.   On a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a London crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence: Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer, and Vernon is a newspaper editor. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, Foreign Secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister. In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences that neither could have foreseen…