LibGuides: Kent State Stark Library Book Club: February 2014

Everyone is Welcome!

Kent State Stark Library Book Club

Meeting Date: Thursday,

Feb. 20th, 2014

Time: 5:15 p.m.

Meeting will be held in Library Conference Room

Jodi Picoult Books

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult
ISBN: 1439102740
Publication Date: 2012-02-28
In the wild, when a wolf knows its time is over, when it knows it is of no more use to its pack, it may sometimes choose to slip away. Dying apart from its family, it stays proud and true to its nature. Humans aren't so lucky. Luke Warren has spent his life researching wolves. He has written about them, studied their habits intensively, and even lived with them for extended periods of time. In many ways, Luke understands wolf dynamics better than those of his own family. His wife, Georgie, has left him, finally giving up on their lonely marriage. His son, Edward, twenty-four, fled six years ago, leaving behind a shattered relationship with his father. Edward understands that some things cannot be fixed, though memories of his domineering father still inflict pain. Then comes a frantic phone call: Luke has been gravely injured in a car accident with Edward's younger sister, Cara. Suddenly everything changes: Edward must return home to face the father he walked out on at age eighteen. He and Cara have to decide their father's fate together. Though there's no easy answer, questions abound: What secrets have Edward and his sister kept from each other? What hidden motives inform their need to let their father die . . . or to try to keep him alive? What would Luke himself want? How can any family member make such a decision in the face of guilt, pain, or both? And most importantly, to what extent have they all forgotten what a wolf never forgets: that each member of a pack needs the others, and that sometimes survival means sacrifice?
Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult; Samantha van Leer
ISBN: 9781451635751
Publication Date: 2012-06-26
New York Times "bestselling author Jodi Picoult and her teenage daughter present their first-ever novel for teens, filled with romance, adventure, and humor. What happens when happily ever after...isn't? Delilah is a bit of a loner who prefers spending her time in the school library with her head in a book--one book in particular. Between the Lines" may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah. And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He's a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He's sure there's more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom. Delilah and Oliver work together to attempt to get Oliver out of his book, a challenging task that forces them to examine their perceptions of fate, the world, and their places in it. And as their attraction to each other grows along the way, a romance blossoms that is anything but a fairy tale.

Library Book Club Pick for February 2014

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
ISBN: 9781439102763
Publication Date: 2013-02-26
"Some stories live forever . . . " Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day's breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother's death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage's grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can't, and they become companions. Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret--one that nobody else in town would ever suspect--and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she's ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she's made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy? In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future.

Author

Biographical sketch

Jodi Picoult, 47, is the bestselling author of of twenty-one novels: Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect (1995),Mercy (1996), The Pact (1998), Keeping Faith (1999), Plain Truth (2000), Salem Falls(2001), Perfect Match (2002), Second Glance (2003), My Sister's Keeper(2004),Vanishing Acts (2005), The Tenth Circle (2006) Nineteen Minutes (2007), Change of Heart (2008), Handle With Care (2009), House Rules (2010), and SING YOU HOME(2011), LONE WOLF (2012) and the YA novel BETWEEN THE LINES (2012) co-written with her daughter Samantha van Leer. Her last seven novels, including THE STORYTELLER., her most recent, have debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Picoult studied creative writing with Mary Morris at Princeton, and had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine while still a student. Realism - and a profound desire to be able to pay the rent - led Picoult to a series of different jobs following her graduation: as a technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, as a copywriter at an ad agency, as an editor at a textbook publisher, and as an 8th grade English teacher - before entering Harvard to pursue a master’s in education. She married Tim Van Leer, whom she had known at Princeton, and it was while she was pregnant with her first child that she wrote her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale.

http://jodipicoult.com/JodiPicoult.html

Book Club Recommendations!

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
ISBN: 9780375831003
Publication Date: 2006-03-14
The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that will be in movie theaters on November 15, 2013, Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who 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. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
ISBN: 9781476711959
Publication Date: 2013-11-05
ONE MOMENT IN TIME CAN HAUNT YOU FOREVER. Caught up in a moment of boyhood competition, William Bellman recklessly aims his slingshot at a rook resting on a branch, killing the bird instantly. It is a small but cruel act, and is soon forgotten. By the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, William seems to have put the whole incident behind him. It was as if he never killed the thing at all. But rooks don't forget . . . Years later, when a stranger mysteriously enters William's life, his fortunes begin to turn--and the terrible and unforeseen consequences of his past indiscretion take root. In a desperate bid to save the only precious thing he has left, he enters into a rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner. Together, they found a decidedly macabre business. And Bellman & Black is born.
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup; Dolen Perkins-Valdez (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9781476767345
Publication Date: 2013-11-19
The story that inspired the major motion picture, with an introduction by the bestselling author of "Wench," Dolen Perkins-Valdez, "Twelve Years a Slave" is a harrowing, vividly detailed, and utterly unforgettable account of slavery. Solomon Northup was an entrepreneur and dedicated family man, father to three young children, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. What little free time he had after long days of manual and farm labor he spent reading books and playing the violin. Though his father was born into slavery, Solomon was born and lived free. In March 1841, two strangers approached Northup, offering him employment as a violinist in a town hundreds of miles away from his home in Saratoga Springs, New York. Solomon bid his wife farewell until his return. Only after he was drugged and bound did he realize the strangers were kidnappers--that nefarious brand of criminals in the business of capturing runaway and free blacks for profit. Thus began Northup's horrific life as a slave. Dehumanized, beaten, and worked mercilessly, Northup suffered all the more, wondering what had become of his family. One owner was savagely cruel and Northup recalls he was "indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse." Just as he felt the summer of his life fade and all hope nearly lost, he met a kindhearted stranger who changed the course of his life. With its firsthand account of this country's Peculiar Institution, this is a book no one interested in American history can afford to miss.

Featured Speakers Series

Jodi Picoult

The Facts Behind the Fiction

Monday, Feb. 24, 2014
7:30 p.m.

Tickets available February 3.

A best-selling author of 21 novels, Jodi Picoult has been writing fiction since age five. As a student at Princeton University, she published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. Today, 14 million copies of her books are in print worldwide and she consistently receives international acclaim through numerous awards and reader response. Four of her books have been reproduced as television movies and her 2009 novel, My Sister’s Keeper, became a major motion picture, starring Cameron Diaz. The New York TimesBestseller List has debuted each of her last seven novels in the number one slot, including her newest work, The Storyteller.

http://www.stark.kent.edu/about/events/featuredspeakers/index.cfm