January Selection: Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This month, we're reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. Here's a review from Library Journal:

This is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Boo's (The New Yorker) first book. She takes a look at the stark lives of the inhabitants of Annawadi, a slum across from Mumbai's Sahar Airport, to reveal the wrenching inequality and urban poverty still endemic in India's democracy. Using recorded and videotaped conversations, interviews, documents, and the assistance of interlocutors, Boo profiles the lives of some of the slum dwellers from November 2007 to March 2011. There is Abdul, a young adult scavenger with a profitable trade in recyclables. The one-legged Fatima's home is divided from Abdul's by merely a sheet. Readers follow the treacherous paths of these and other lives. A fateful chain of events leads to a criminal case against Abdul and his family. Boo presents glimpses of the corrupt police who feed on those without political power or education. She claims she witnessed most of the events described in the book. VERDICT A tour de force, this book is powerful yet far from harrowing.

Post your opinions and questions about the book in the comment section, and we'll add discussion questions there as the month progresses.

November Selection

In November, we're reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Here's a description from BN.com:

Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

We'll meet Saturday, November 24th at 10:00 a.m. in the Netzer Room at the Christian County Library to discuss the book. Everyone is welcome! No registration required. Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Christian County Library.

October Selection

Next Discussion:
October 27th, 10:00 a.m.
Netzer Room, Christian County Library
Refreshments provided by Christian County Friends of the Library

October’s Selection: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Overview from BN.com: 
This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

Ask Christian County Library staff for help in obtaining a copy of the book. Call (417)581-2432.

September Selection

This month we will be reading and discussing "The Immortal Life of Henreitta Lacks" Join us at the library Saturday, September 22nd at 10:00am. Refreshments provided by Friends of the library will be served.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

August Selection

We're reading The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach in August. Here's a decription from Barnes & Noble:

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2011

We'll meet on Saturday, August 25th at 10:00 a.m. in the Netzer Room at the Christian County Library to discuss the book. Refreshments are provided by the Friends of the Library. No registration is required. Need a copy of the book? Check http://coolcat.org or http://searchmobius.org to request an available copy with your library card, or call the library at (417)581-2432. Hope to see you there!

July's Selection

July's Christian County Library Book Club selection is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. From the hardcover edition:



"It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.


This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul."


Join us in the Netzer Room at the Christian County Library on July 28th at 10:00 a.m. to discuss The Book Thief. Refreshments will be provided by the Friends of the Library.


Need a copy of the book? Check our catalog at http://coolcat.org, request a copy through MOBIUS with your library card, or contact the librarary at (417)581-2432 for staff assistance.

June 23rd @ 10:00am

The Christian County Library Book Club will meet again on Saturday, June 23rd at 10:00am. 

The book that has been chosen to discuss is The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht.

You are welcome to join us! It is free to attend and refreshments provided by the Friends of the Library will be served. 

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The sometimes crushing power of myth, story, and memory is explored in the brilliant debut of Obreht, the youngest of the New Yorker's 20-under-40. Natalia Stefanovi, a doctor living (and, in between suspensions, practicing) in an unnamed country that's a ringer for Obreht's native Croatia, crosses the border in search of answers about the death of her beloved grandfather, who raised her on tales from the village he grew up in, and where, following German bombardment in 1941, a tiger escaped from the zoo in a nearby city and befriended a mysterious deaf-mute woman. The evolving story of the tiger's wife, as the deaf-mute becomes known, forms one of three strands that sustain the novel, the other two being Natalia's efforts to care for orphans and a wayward family who, to lift a curse, are searching for the bones of a long-dead relative; and several of her grandfather's stories about Gavran Gailé, the deathless man, whose appearances coincide with catastrophe and who may hold the key to all the stories that ensnare Natalia. Obreht is an expert at depicting history through aftermath, people through the love they inspire, and place through the stories that endure; the reflected world she creates is both immediately recognizable and a legend in its own right. Obreht is talented far beyond her years, and her unsentimental faith in language, dream, and memory is a pleasure.