Page Turner Book Blog

What we’re reading at the Page Turner Book Club this fall…..

hintonlibrary — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:44:35 +0000

Sept. 20 – The art of racing in the rain by Garth Stein
Oct. 18 – Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Nov. 15 – I am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby

Order in your copy ASAP and join other avid book readers for an evening of lively discussion.

Teck Coal Room @ the Library from 7:00 – 8:30 pm

Page Turner Book Club returns for 4th season!!

hintonlibrary — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 22:40:01 +0000

The book club is back!! First meeting is Monday, September 20th from 7:00 to 8:30 pm. Read “The art of racing in the rain” by Garth Stein and join in the discussion.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

hintonlibrary — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:58:59 +0000

Still Alice by Lisa Genova is the book selection for the April meeting of the Page Turner Book Club. The main character, Alice Howland, at 50 years old finds herself in the sudden descent of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Alice is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices forgetfulness creeping into her seemingly organized life. Alice is fiercely independent and struggles to maintain her lifestyle while her sense of self is slowly being stripped away. Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind…

Meet in the Teck Coal Room on Monday, April 19th from 7:00 – 8:30 to discuss this thought provoking topic.

Fall on your knees by Ann-Marie Macdonald

hintonlibrary — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:50:51 +0000

The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives even to destroy them. Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and redemption.

The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

hintonlibrary — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:49:26 +0000

In the Chinatown of 1940s Vancouver, three children of Chinese immigrant parents nurture dreams of making their own mark on the world around them. Jung-Sum is an adopted son who fights in the boxing ring – and wrestles with uncertainty about his own sexual identity. Jook-Liang dreams of escaping the confines of tradition to become the next Shirley Temple, and Sekky, the youngest child, surprises the rest of the family with his own quiet wisdom. The Jade Peony is a moving story of memory and loss, and of reconciling the past with the future.

Generation X by Douglas Coupland

hintonlibrary — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:47:54 +0000

Generation X is Douglas Coupland”s acclaimed salute to the generation born in the late 1950s and 1960s–a generation known vaguely up to then as “twentysomething.”Andy, Claire, and Dag, each in their twenties, have quit “pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause” in their respective hometowns and cut themselves adrift on the California desert. In search of the drastic changes that will lend meaning to their lives, they”ve mired themselves in the detritus of American cultural memory. Refugees from history, the three develop an ascetic regime of story-telling, boozing, and working McJobs–”low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry.” They create modern fables of love and death among the cosmetic surgery parlors and cocktail bars of Palm Springs, disturbingly funny tales of nuclear waste, historical overdosing, and mall culture.A dark snapshot of the trio”s highly fortressed inner world quickly emerges–landscapes peopled with dead TV shows, “Elvis moments,” and semi-disposable Swedish furniture. And from these landscapes, deeper portraits emerge, those of fanatically independent individuals, pathologically ambivalent about the future and brimming with unsatisfied longings for permanence, for love, and for their own home. Andy, Dag, and Claire are underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable. Like the group they mirror, they have nowhere to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie.

Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner

hintonlibrary — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:44:57 +0000

In the spring of 1989, three young people, born thousands of miles apart, each cut themselves adrift from their birthplaces and set out to discover what – or who – might anchor them in their lives. They each leave almost everything behind, carrying with them only a few artefacts of their lives so far – possessions that have proven so formative that they can’t imagine surviving without them – but also the accumulated memories of their own lives and family histories.
Their journeys seem remarkably unformed, more often guided by the prevailing winds than personal will, yet their stories weave in and out of other wondrous tales – stories about such things as fearsome female pirates, urban archaeologists, unexpected floods, fish of all kinds, a mysterious book without a cover and a dysfunctional compass whose needle obstinately points to the remote Aleutian village of Nikolski. And it is in the magical accumulation of those details around the edges of their lives that we begin to know these individuals as part of a greater whole, and ultimately realize that anchors aren’t at all permanent, really; rather, they’re made to be hoisted up and held in reserve until their strength is needed again.

Good to a fault by Marina Endicott

hintonlibrary — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:39:34 +0000

Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara-against all habit and comfort-moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house. We know what is good, but we don’t do it. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the consequences: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt? Most shamefully, has she taken over simply because she wants the baby for her own? What do we owe in this life, and what do we deserve? This compassionate, funny, and fiercely intelligent novel looks at life and death through grocery-store reading glasses: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

Canada Reads 2010

hintonlibrary — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:31:16 +0000

What is the Canadian book that everyone should read this year? Follow the book debates hosted by Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio One from March 8 to 12, 2010 at 11:30 am and 7:30 pm. Five celebrity panelists will be defending their book choice. The celebrity panelists and their choices are:

Simi Sara defends Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott

Michel Vezina defends Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner

Roland Pemberton aka Cadence Weapon defends Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Samantha Nutt defends The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy

Perdita Felicien defends Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie Macdonald

For more info and to enter to win all of the books check out the website at www.cbc.ca/canadareads.

2010 Book Club Selections

hintonlibrary — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:04:36 +0000

The Page Turner Book Club’s selections for 2010 are:

January 18/10 – According to Jake and the Kid by W. O. Mitchell

February 22/10 – Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

March 15/10 – The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

April 19/10 – Still Alice – Lisa Genova

May 17/10 – Reader’s Choice – Bring a book to share with your fellow bibliophiles.

The Page Turner Book Club meets in the Teck Coal Room from 7:00 – 8:30 pm. Everyone welcome. Order in your copy of any of the selections asap and join in lively and thought provoking discussions.