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Open Book Club

22 Mar, 2025

April’s Open Book Club: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

By |March 22nd, 2025|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

The great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke’s life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them.

2 Jan, 2025

January’s Open Book Club: Eat the World by Marina Diamandis

By |January 2nd, 2025|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

Hailed by The New York Times for “redefining songs about coming of age, and the aftermath, with bluntness and crafty intelligence,” Marina delves even further into trauma, youth, and the highs and lows of relationships in these profound, autobiographical poems to form a collection that transcends the boundaries of music and literature. 

12 Sep, 2024

October’s Open Book Club: Kingdom Quarterback by Mark Dent and Rustin Dodd

By |September 12th, 2024|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

Fresh off of a gutsy, thrilling 2023 Super Bowl win for the Kansas City Chiefs, two inspiring stories that fit perfectly together—a biography of superstar quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, who brought the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in fifty years in 2020 as well as a second in 2023, along with the historical struggles and recent resurgence of the former “Paris of the Plains,” Kansas City. 

17 Jul, 2024

August’s Open Book Club: Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal

By |July 17th, 2024|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone. 

24 Jun, 2024

July’s Open Book Club: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

By |June 24th, 2024|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins struggle and what they must do to survive. There are two in-person sessions each month and a virtual option for those who can't make the in-person meetings!

4 May, 2024

June’s Open Book Club: People Collide by Isle McElroy

By |May 4th, 2024|Adults, Events, Library News, Open Book Club, Reader Services|

A rich, rewarding exploration of ambition and sacrifice, desire and loss, People Collide is a portrait of shared lives that shines a refreshing light on everything we thought we knew about love, sexuality, and the truth of who we are. There are two in-person sessions each month and a virtual option for those who can't make the in-person meetings!