Archives: Book Clubs

Book Clubbers (12/03/2020): The Paragon Hotel
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Book Clubbers (12/03/2020): The Paragon Hotel

November 6, 2020

A gun moll with a knack for disappearing flees from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland’s Paragon Hotel.

The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime’s experience battling the New York Mafia, and fifty thousand dollars in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises.

As she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she understands their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers—burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon “family” are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.

A richly imagined novel starring two indomitable heroines, The Paragon Hotel at once plumbs the darkest parts of America’s past and the most redemptive facets of humanity. From international-bestselling, multi-award-nominated writer Lyndsay Faye, it’s a masterwork of historical suspense. […]

Stranger than Fiction (12/01/2020): This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Book Clubs

Stranger than Fiction (12/01/2020): This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

November 4, 2020

Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life—even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature, including:

• Are our musical preferences shaped in utero?
• Is there a cutoff point for acquiring new tastes in music?
• What do PET scans and MRIs reveal about the brain’s response to music?
• Is musical pleasure different from other kinds of pleasure?

This Is Your Brain on Music explores cultures in which singing is considered an essential human function, patients who have a rare disorder that prevents them from making sense of music, and scientists studying why two people may not have the same definition of pitch. At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession. […]

Oh, the Horror! (11/24/2020): Ararat
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Oh, the Horror! (11/24/2020): Ararat

October 28, 2020

“When a newly engaged couple climbs Mount Ararat in Turkey, an avalanche forces them to seek shelter inside a massive cave uncovered by the snow fall. The cave is actually an ancient, buried ship that many quickly come to believe is really Noah’s Ark. But when a team of scholars, archaeologists, and filmmakers make it inside the ark for the first time, they discover an elaborate coffin in its recesses … and when they break it open, they find that the cadaver within is an ugly, misshapen thing … and it has horns. A massive blizzard blows in, trapping them in that cave thousands of meters up the side of a remote mountain … but they are not alone”– Provided by publisher. […]

Enjoying the Classics (11/18/2020): Riders of the Purple Sage
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Enjoying the Classics (11/18/2020): Riders of the Purple Sage

October 22, 2020

In 1871 Utah, young Jane Withersteen is courted by Elder Tull, the leader of her polygamous Mormon church. When Jane refuses, the local Mormons persecute her. Meanwhile, Jane’s friend, Bern Venters, is captured by Tull’s posse and faces a harsh sentence. Jane defends him, causing even more friction with the Mormon populace. Enter Lassiter, a friend to Venters and an infamous gunslinger. His appearance causes Tull and his men to release Venters and flee – sparking a conflict that leaves Jane questioning her loyalties, Venters finding love, and Lassiter seeking revenge. […]

Happily Ever After (11/16/2020): Persuasion
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Happily Ever After (11/16/2020): Persuasion

October 20, 2020

Anne Elliot lives at Kellynch Hall with her two sisters and vain father Sir Walter. When financial struggles begin to affect the Elliot family, they decide to move to Bath. Anne decides to visit before the move, and runs into many old friends. Most surprisingly she is reunited with Fredrick Wentworth, a past fiancé who under advice from her father and friend Lady Russell never married. Wentworth’s lack of wealth and rank in the community were their main concerns and therefore eight years later Anne is still unmarried with little romantic prospects. However, through her journey and move Anne may find that what she has been looking for was right in front of her the whole time. […]

Nite Readers (11/19/2020): What the Lady Wants
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Nite Readers (11/19/2020): What the Lady Wants

October 16, 2020

In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, visionary retail tycoon Marshall Field made his fortune wooing women customers with his famous motto: “Give the lady what she wants.” His legendary charm also won the heart of socialite Delia Spencer and led to an infamous love affair.

The night of the Great Fire, as seventeen-year-old Delia watches the flames rise and consume what was the pioneer town of Chicago, she can’t imagine how much her life, her city, and her whole world are about to change. Nor can she have guess that the agent of that change will not simply be the fire, but more so the man she meets that night….

Leading the way in rebuilding after the fire, Marshall Field reopens his well-known dry goods store and transforms it into something the world has never seen before: a glamorous palace of a department store. He and his powerhouse coterie—including Potter Palmer and George Pullman—usher in the age of robber barons, the American royalty of their generation.

But behind the opulence, their private lives are riddled with scandal and heartbreak. Delia and Marshall first turn to each other out of loneliness, but as their love deepens, they will stand together despite disgrace and ostracism, through an age of devastation and opportunity, when an adolescent Chicago is transformed into the gleaming White City of the Chicago’s World’s Fair of 1893. […]

Forever Young (11/09/2020): Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam
Book Clubs

Forever Young (11/09/2020): Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam

October 13, 2020

In March 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops into Vietnam. 57,939 American soldiers would be killed and seventeen years would pass before this controversial chapter of American history concluded with the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982.

The history of this era is complex; the cultural impact extraordinary. But it’s the personal stories of eight people—six American soldiers, one American nurse, and one Vietnamese refugee—that form the heartbeat of Boots on the Ground. From dense jungles and terrifying firefights to chaotic medic rescues and evacuations, each individual’s story reveals a different facet of the war and moves us forward in time. Alternating with these chapters are profiles of key American leaders and events, reminding us what was happening at home, including Kent State, Woodstock, and Watergate. This show-stopping book is Elizabeth Partridge at her finest. […]