April Book Club Meetings

March 31, 2013

The Livermore Public Library hosts several book clubs at the Civic Center Library, 1188 S. Livermore Avenue. The book clubs are run by library volunteers and new members are always welcome. The following book clubs have meetings scheduled for April:

We're Talkin' Books! Club
Thursday, April 11, 7pm; Storytime Room
Featured Title: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You by Peter Troy.
Set during the Civil War, Peter Troy’s novel is a story of four characters who illuminate the quintessential American experience. Ethan survived the Irish Famine and made the crossing to America, but is tested by the neighborhoods of New York until he discovers photography; Marcella Arroyo arrives from Spain a high-spirited girl but defies her father to become an abolitionist; and slaves Mary and Micah plot an escape on Christmas Eve hoping to find a better future. When war brings them all together, it will dramatically change the course of their individual lives.

Political Issues Book Club
Tuesday, April 23, 7pm; Storytime Room
Featured Title: How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough.
Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence:  success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs.  But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control.

Good Reads Book Club—American Heroines in Fiction
Thursday, April 25, 7pm; Storytime Room
Featured Title: The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.
The Chaperone is a captivating novel about Cora Carlisle, the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both. Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s, ’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them. 

Science Fiction Book Club
Monday, April 29, 7pm; Community Room A
Featured Title: The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett.
2015: Police officer Monica Jansson is exploring the burned-out home of a reclusive scientist and  finds a curious gadget - it is the prototype of an invention that will change the way humankind views the world forever. The "stepper" enables a person using it to step sideways into another America, another Earth. And if the person keeps on stepping, they keep on entering even more Earths. This is the Long Earth and the further away a stepper travels, the stranger -- and sometimes more dangerous -- the Earths become.