Monthly Book Discussion Group This group meets the third Friday of each month. Books for discussion are chosen by the facilitator as well as by the suggestion of those in the group. Below is a list of the books for 2008: All adults welcome, this is a free event.

   January - The Island of Lost Maps By Miles Harvey. the story of a curious crime spree: the theft of scores of valuable centuries-old maps from some of the most prominent research libraries in the United States and Canada. The perpetrator was the Al Capone of cartography, a man with the unlikely name of Gilbert Bland, Jr., an enigmatic antiques dealer from south Florida whose cross-country slash-and-dash operation went virtually undetected until he was caught in December 1995.

   February - Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo By Paula Huntley.  One year after the 1999 NATO bombings, an American woman accompanied her husband to Prishtina, Kosovo with the aim of working as a volunteer in the war-torn region. Paula Huntley ended up teaching English to a group of Kosovo Albanian refugees and formed an American-style book club with them to study Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. This text for the general reader is based upon the journal Huntley kept during her eight-month stay. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

   March - Nick Adams Stories By Ernest Hemingway.  Allegan county libraries are doing a One Book event called Allegan County's One Book One County in participation with the Great Michigan Read. This book is being read all over the state of Michigan with over 100 libraries and museums and historical societies participating. Please come and join us for this discussion.

   April - National Poetry Month we will be writing our own poetry again this year. We will be having another Poetry Slam sponsored by the Friends of the Library. This event is being held across the street at the Dailey Brews. Date and time to come.

   May - One Thousand White Women By Jim Fergus. the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians. The covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world. Toward that end May and her friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime. Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time.

 June - Marley & Me By John Grogan. After Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Grogan wrote a tribute to his beloved pet of twelve years, the overwhelming response of readers prompted him to write the full story of Marley's colorful life. Grogan's heartfelt ode to the canine member of his family has become one of the most talked-about memoirs of the season.

July - Worst Hard Time By Timothy Egan.  The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, "the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect" (New York Times).

August - A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini.  Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

September - Enrique's Journey By Sonia Nazario. In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States.

October - Reader's Theater - This will be our third Reader's Theater. We will be taking a part or two and reading through a play, which is yet to be determined. We had a great time with our first plays. If you want to take part stop by the library and let Carol know. Everyone must be a reader. No audience due to royalties that must be paid to the copyright holder.

November - People of the Book By Geraldine Brooks. In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book's mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book's journey from its salvation back to its creation.

 December - Best of 2008 - We will gather for goodies and to chat about the books we have read throughout the year. These can be book club books or not. Come and eat and tell us what were some of your favorite books and why.  We will also be selecting books for discussion in 2009.