Book Club

NEW MEETING OPTIONS

Choose a daytime meeting at 1 pm or a nighttime meeting at 7 pm on the first Thursday of each month. Both meetings are held at the library but a virtual option will be offered at the 7pm meeting via Zoom. Please contact the library at 991-1660 or mtlaurel@shelbycounty-al.org for more information or to get on the book club mailing list. Check the calendar here for additional information.

READING THE BOOK
The primary purpose of the book club is to have an exchange of ideas, which means you need to attempt to read the book. So, please give the book a try and read as much of it as possible. If you aren’t able to  finish the entire book, you will still be able to participate and be a welcome addition to the group based on how much you read. Hopefully, at the end of the discussion you will be able to answer the question: “Did what you hear make you want to finish the book?” 

REQUESTING THE BOOK:
The library will do its best to supply books to all members of the book club through print copies, ebook downloads, and audiobooks. Due to the increasing number of the group and popularity of certain books, we may not always have enough books available in the system at one time. It is strongly encouraged that you read ahead or plan to get the book independently of the library if none are available. 

BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

Current Book Club Brochure

Here are the upcoming Mt Laurel book club books:

June 2: The Overstory by Richard Powers

August 11: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

September 8: A Girl Stands at the Door by Rachel Devlin

October 6: Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Special event!  Meet local author Anne Glass (pen name Antonia Gavrihel) at the October book club. Back to One by Antonia Gavrihel

November 3: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

December 1: The Children’s Blizzard: A Novel by Melanie Benjamin OR The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin

Previous Selections

Click on the title for more information

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman	The Hours by Michael Cunningham	An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
Elephant Company by Vicki Croke	The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt	Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain	The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins	The Husband’s Secret by Laine Moriarty
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner	The Wright Brothers by David McCullough	The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
In Manchuria by Michael Meyer	Cold Winter Rain by Steven P. Gregory	The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal
Keeping the Faith by Wayne Flynt	The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri	This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Padgett
Lucky Us by Amy Bloom	Audubon’s Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis	And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett	The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro	The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel	Defending Jacob by William Landay	The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton	A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens	The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Great House by Nicole Krauss	Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn	The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak	The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah	Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende	The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan	All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Crossing by Howard Fast	Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo	The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
My Life in France by Julia Child	Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf	Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Strapless by Deborah Davis	The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey	The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance	The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman	Love, Life and Elephants by Daphne Sheldrick
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles	The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood	The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
El Paso by Winston Groom	A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman	The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig	Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate	The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg
The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant	The Bettencourt Affair by Tom Sancton	The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah	The Moviegoerby Walker Percy	Love by the Glass by Dorothy Gaiter & John Brecher
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan	A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles	The Good Neighbor: The Life & Works of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee	Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens	The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Carnegie’s Maid by Marie Benedict	The Library Book by Susan Orlean	The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding by Jennifer Robson
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz	Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver	A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
If the Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss	Educated by Tara Westover	Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell
The Address by Fiona Davis	Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal	Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett	Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan	The Shadowy Horses by Susanna Kearsley
The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig	When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin	Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah	Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout	The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters by Laura Thompson
Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict	Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie	Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar J Mazzeo
The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See	The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles	When We Were Young and Brave by Hazel Gaynor
The Taking of Jemima Boone by Matthew Pearl	The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes	Surviving Savannah by Patti Callahan Henry
The Overstory by Richard Powers		Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy