Wilton Public & Gregg Free Library


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Wilton Public & Gregg Free Library

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Join the discussion each month, January through November, Last Wed. of the month at 11AM.

The library offers a monthly book discussion group for adults led by Rebecca or Jane. The group meets in person, outside weather permitting, or socially distanced inside if necessary. 11AM the last Wed. of the month. Books are available for check-out one month ahead of the meeting, and are on display upstairs opposite the circ desk. For more information, contact Rebecca Brown at the library.


Are you looking to start your own book group?

Ask us how!

If so contact us about getting enough copies through inter-library loan. We have access to the whole state system and can set your group up with the titles they are looking for.


March 2024 Book Group Selection

West With the Night- Markham

Beryl Markham's West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Isak Dinesen.If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure. Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane. And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix―she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty.


February 2024 Book Group Selection

The Enchanted April by Von Arnim

A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed. The women at the center of Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy. Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete.  ~The New York Review Books

The Enchanted April was a best-seller in both England and the United States, where it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and set off a craze for tourism to Portofino. More recently, the novel has been the inspiration for a major film and a Broadway play.

 The group will meet Wed. Feb 28th at 11AM to discuss this book, all are welcome.


January 2024 Book Group Selection

Share what you are reading!

To start off the new year we are each reading our own selection and will discuss it on Wed. Jan. 31st at 11 AM, weather allowing!


November 2023 Book Group Selection

Journal of Solitude by May Sarton

In this, her bestselling journal, May Sarton writes with keen observation and emotional courage of both inner and outer worlds: a garden, the seasons, daily life in New Hampshire, books, people, ideas—and throughout everything, her spiritual and artistic journey. "I am here alone for the first time in weeks," May Sarton begins this book, "to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened." In this journal, she says, "I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths, to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there." In this book, we are closer to the marrow than ever before in May Sarton's writing.

~Barnes and Noble

 

 

 


October Book 2023 Group Selection

Flight Patterns by Karen White

Georgia Chambers has spent her life sifting through other people’s pasts while trying to forget her own. But then her work as an expert on fine china—especially Limoges—requires her to return to the one place she swore she’d never revisit....It has been ten years since Georgia left her family home on the coast of Florida, and nothing much has changed except that there are fewer oysters and more tourists. She finds solace in seeing her grandfather still toiling away in the apiary where she spent much of her childhood, but encountering her estranged mother and sister leaves her rattled. Seeing them after all this time makes Georgia realize that something has been missing—and unless she finds a way to heal these rifts, she will forever be living vicariously through other people’s remnants. To embrace her own life—mistakes and all—she will have to find the courage to confront the ghosts of her past and the secrets she was forced to keep....

 


September Book Group Selection

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart

Do you remember the best summer of your life?

New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and her best friend, Marty Garrett, arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany & Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor—a diamond-filled day job replete with Tiffany blue shirtwaist dresses from Bonwit Teller's—and the envy of all their friends.

Hart takes us back to the magical time when she and Marty rubbed elbows with the rich and famous; pinched pennies to eat at the Automat; experienced nightlife at La Martinique; and danced away their weekends with dashing midshipmen. Between being dazzled by Judy Garland's honeymoon visit to Tiffany, celebrating VJ Day in Times Square, and mingling with Café Society, she fell in love, learned unforgettable lessons, made important decisions that would change her future, and created the remarkable memories she now shares with all of us. ~Amazon

 


July 2023 Book Group Selection

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

Featuring David Sedaris's unique blend of hilarity and heart, this new illustrated collection of animal-themed tales is an utter delight. Though the characters may not be human, the situations in these stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the insanity of everyday life.

In "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," three strangers commiserate about animal bureaucracy while waiting in a complaint line. In "Hello Kitty," a cynical feline struggles to sit through his prison-mandated AA meetings. In "The Squirrel and the Chipmunk," a pair of star-crossed lovers is separated by prejudiced family members.

With original illustrations by Ian Falconer, author of the bestselling
Olivia series of children's books, these stories are David Sedaris at his most observant, poignant, and surprising.

June 2023 Book Group Selection

The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins

Prepare to fall under the spell ofthis sometimes whimsical, often insightful, always absorbing story” (Shelf Awareness) following two fiercely independent women and their truly magical friendship in a sleepy Southern town, from New York Times bestselling author of Karen Hawkins.
Sarah Dove is no ordinary bookworm. To her, books live, breathe, and sometimes even speak. As the librarian in her quaint Southern town of Dove Pond, her gift helps place every book in the hands of the perfect reader. Recently, however, the books have been whispering about something out of the ordinary: the arrival of a displaced city girl named Grace Wheeler.
If the books are right, Grace could be the savior Dove Pond desperately needs. The problem is, Grace wants little to do with the town or its quirky residents—Sarah chief among them. But with a bit of urging, and the help of an especially wise book, will Grace ultimately embrace the challenge to rescue her charmed new community?

“A mesmerizing fusion of the mystical and the everyday” (Susan Andersen,
New York Times bestselling author), The Book Charmer is a heartwarming story about the magic of books that feels more than a little magical itself.
The Book discussion will be held Wed. June 28th at 11AM.

May 2023 Book Group Selection

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger

Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is “cruising along at medium altitude” when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals―from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man, to Tom, a journalist and Virgil’s oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.
With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, Virgil Wander is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a “formidably gifted” (Chicago Tribune) master storyteller.

 

Book Group discussion will be held Wed. May 31st at 11AM.

 


April 2023 Book Group Selection

An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the Northern Ireland village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there. But Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice. At least until he meets Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly. The older physician has his own way of doing things. At first, Barry can't decide if the pugnacious O'Reilly is the biggest charlatan he has ever met or the best teacher he could ever hope for. Through O'Reilly, Barry soon gets to know all of the village's colourful and endearing residents and a host of other eccentric characters who make every day an education for the inexperienced young doctor. Ballybucklebo is a long way from Belfast, and Barry is quick to discover that he still has a lot to learn about country life. But with pluck and compassion, and only the slightest touch of blarney, he will find out more about life--and love--than he ever imagined back in medical school.