The Classics Book Discussion Group meets the third Monday of the month, except during summer, at noon in the Bicentennial Room on the 3^th floor of the library. Attendees are welcome to bring their lunch. Coffee and tea will be provided. Please call the Readers' Services desk at 753-4900 extension 206 if you have any questions about the reading group.

On Monday, February 16, 2015, the group will meet to discuss Song of the Lark, by Willa Cather.

Jacket Notes:

This moving tale of a woman's devotion to her art is one of Cather's most autobiographical works.

A moving story about a young woman's artistic growth, "The Song of the Lark" (1915) conflates Willa Cather's own childhood experiences with the career of a celebrated Wagnerian soprano of her day. Thea Kronberg is a Scandinavian-American singer who rises from a one-story Colorado town to the Metropolitan Opera House. Along the way she struggles with the tension between nurturing personal vitality and achieving artistic sublimity. The enervated artist seeks solace in an isolated desert canyon where she experiences the epiphany that will transform her vision and art. As is characteristic in Cather's work, the western landscape both represents the inner lives of characters and regenerates their tired imaginations.

"The Song of the Lark" is an eloquent expression of Cather's paradoxical fondness of and impatience with the small-town milieu of her childhood, as well as an evocative portrait of a young American woman artist.

Classics Book Group Newsletter (see all the upcoming titles with book covers, reviews, link to the catalog, and more)

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The Contemporary Fiction Book Discussion Group meets at 6 p.m. in the DeFrates Reading Room (2nd floor) on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Please call the Readers' Services desk at 753-4900, ext. 206, if you have any questions about the reading group.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015, the group will meet to discuss Dollbaby, by Laura Lane McNeal.

Jacket Notes:

A Top Ten Finalist for Best Historical Novel, Goodreads Choice Awards, and a LibraryReads and Okra Pick

A big-hearted coming-of-age debut set in civil rights-era New Orleans--a novel of Southern eccentricity and secrets

When Ibby Bell's father dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1964, her mother unceremoniously deposits Ibby with her eccentric grandmother Fannie and throws in her father's urn for good measure. Fannie's New Orleans house is like no place Ibby has ever been--and Fannie, who has a tendency to end up in the local asylum--is like no one she has ever met. Fortunately, Fannie's black cook, Queenie, and her smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, take it upon themselves to initiate Ibby into the ways of the South, both its grand traditions and its darkest secrets.

For Fannie's own family history is fraught with tragedy, hidden behind the closed rooms in her ornate Uptown mansion. It will take Ibby's arrival to begin to unlock the mysteries there. And it will take Queenie and Dollbaby's hard-won wisdom to show Ibby that family can sometimes be found in the least expected places.

Contemporary Fiction Book Group Newsletter (see all the upcoming titles with book covers, reviews, link to the catalog, and more)

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