Talk About Books

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library.  The October 2023 selection is a short novel of only 160 pages, set in backwoods Vermont where the local villain, Blackway, is making life hellish for Lillian, a young woman from outside the area. Her boyfriend has fled the state in fear, and local law enforcement can do nothing to protect her. She resolves to stand her ground, and to fight back. Lillian enlists the powerful brute Nate and the wily old-timer Lester to take the fight to her tormenter whilst an eccentric Greek chorus of locals ponders her likely fate.   The novel was inspired by Thomas Malory's King Arthur Tales, specifically "The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney".  This unusual little gem of a book is part comic romp and part nail-biting thriller. Castle Freeman writes with both wit and a deep understanding of the human psyche, and he does not cheat us out of a dramatic climax.

  Isabel Allende's first novel, The House of the Spirits, takes place in Chile and tells the story of four generations of characters, beginning with the intersection of the del Valle family and the Trueba family before the start of World War I. As a young man, Esteban Trueba becomes engaged to the beautiful Rosa del Valle, who looks strikingly like a mermaid. Later, Esteban becomes a wealthy landowner, or patron . He eventually marries Rosa's sister Clara, the youngest of the wealthy and politically active del Valles, who communicates with spirits and can see the future. Esteban becomes a senator, but his way of life is threatened by political war between the right-wing conservatives he supports and the Marxist underclasses, and then by a violent government takeover by militarists. Meanwhile, the Trueba children follow very different paths in their choice of lovers and careers. Two generations -- Esteban and his granddaughter, Alba -- tell their family's story,...

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at the Guilford Free Library at 6:30.  As we are anticipating a larger than usual turn-out, we will hold the July discussion at the Broad Brook Community Center, next door to the library. Altar to an Erupting Sun  is a near-future story of one community facing climate disruption in the critical decade ahead.   Rae Kelliher is a veteran environmental activist and pioneer in the death-with-dignity movement. Facing a diagnosis of terminal illness, she engages in a shocking suicide murder, taking the life of an oil company CEO for his role in delaying responses to climate disruption. Seven years later, Rae’s friends and family gather at her Vermont farm community to try to understand her violent exit and the rapid social transformations around them.     Chuck Collins  is a Guilford Vermont resident. He is a campaigner and storyteller who has worked for decades on environmental and economic...

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. All are welcome to join the discussion. Contact the library if you wish to get a copy of the current book.  Amy Bloom's memoir is an illuminating story of two people whose love leads them to find a courageous way to part--and of a woman's struggle to go forward in the face of loss. Amy Bloom began to notice changes in her husband, Brian: He retired early from a new job he loved; he withdrew from close friendships; he talked mostly about the past. Suddenly, it seemed there was a glass wall between them, and their long walks and talks stopped. Their world was altered forever when an MRI confirmed what they could no longer ignore: Brian had Alzheimer's disease. Forced to confront the truth of the diagnosis and its impact on the future he had envisioned, Brian was determined to die on his feet, not live on his knees. Supporting each other in their last journey together, Brian...

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at the Guilford Free Library.   In Half Broke Horses , Jeannette Walls brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant. "Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable moth...

  Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30. Our April selection, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia reeks of old houses and family secrets. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemí’s dreams with visions of b...

  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...