The Brown Bag Book Discussion Group was founded in 2001 , and it's members have shared over one hundred books since then. Many of the original members of the group are still regular participants.

The group meets on the first Wednesday of each month at 1 PM. The meetings originally included a brown bag lunch, hence the name. This tradition is still occasionally observed, particularly for our Holiday meeting.

We choose our reading material democratically, our choices being based on personal recommendations, "most popular" lists, recent publications and bestseller lists and a little of what we fancy. The group is registered with Reading Group Guides, Book Movement and Random House Reader's Circle.

We are all committed to discussing our literature to the full. Discussions are occasionally led by members of the group who have a special interest in the book. Now and then it has been appropriate to explore the movie version of the story instead of, or as well as, reading the book.

Every effort is made to accommodate members of the group who require large print or audio versions of the discussion material.

We always welcome new members and enjoy everyone's point of view. No sign up is required.

For more information please contact Sue at 203-758-2634 or at sshepherd321@gmail.com

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June 2013

The Brown Bag group will meet on Wednesday, June 5th @ 1 pm 
to discuss  
"The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain

"Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris, where they become the golden couple in a lively and volatile group—the fabled “Lost Generation”—that includes Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for".

The book can be requested here.

Video courtesy of BookLounge

 



May 2013

The Brown Bag group will meet at 1 pm on Wednesday May 1st to discuss "Home Front" by Kristin Hannah.


"All marriages have a breaking point. All families have wounds. All wars have a cost. . . .
Like many couples, Michael and Jolene Zarkades have to face the pressures of everyday life---children, careers, bills, chores---even as their twelve-year marriage is falling apart. Then an unexpected deployment sends Jolene deep into harm’s way and leaves defense attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene to leave her family, but as a solider she has always understood the true meaning of duty. In her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of her life on the front lines, shielding her family from the truth. But war will change Jolene in ways that none of them could have foreseen. When tragedy strikes, Michael must face his darkest fear and fight a battle of his own---for everything that matters to his family.
At once a profoundly honest look at modern marriage and a dramatic exploration of the toll war takes on an ordinary American family, Home Front is a story of love, loss, heroism, honor, and ultimately, hope".



Video courtesy of AuthorKristinHannah


April 2013

The Brown Bag group will meet at 1 pm on Wednesday April 3rd to discuss "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" by Tom Franklin,an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi.

"In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.

More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades".

Video courtesy of BookPagedotcom


March 2013

The Brown Bag group will meet at 1 pm on Wednesday March 6th at Middlebury Public Library at 199 Park Road Extension.

The book to be discussed is "Moloka'i" by Alan Brennert

"Brennert's sweeping debut novel tracks the grim struggle of a Hawaiian woman who contracts leprosy as a child in Honolulu during the 1890s and is deported to the island of Moloka'i, where she grows to adulthood at the quarantined settlement of Kalaupapa. Rachel Kalama is the plucky, seven-year-old heroine whose family is devastated when first her uncle Pono and then she develop leprous sores and are quarantined with the disease. While Rachel's symptoms remain mild during her youth, she watches others her age dying from the disease in near total isolation from family and friends. Rachel finds happiness when she meets Kenji Utagawa, a fellow leprosy victim whose illness brings shame on his Japanese family. After a tender courtship, Rachel and Kenji marry and have a daughter, but the birth of their healthy baby brings as much grief as joy, when they must give her up for adoption to prevent infection. The couple cope with the loss of their daughter and settle into a productive working life until Kenji tries to stop a quarantined U.S. soldier from beating up his girlfriend and is tragically killed in the subsequent fight. The poignant concluding chapters portray Rachel's final years after sulfa drugs are discovered as a cure, leaving her free to abandon Moloka'i and seek out her family and daughter. Brennert's compassion makes Rachel a memorable character, and his smooth storytelling vividly brings early 20th-century Hawaii to life. Leprosy may seem a macabre subject, but Brennert transforms the material into a touching, lovely account of a woman's journey as she rises above the limitations of a devastating illness". 

Video courtesy of jackburton800
 
 
February 2013


The Brown Bag group will meet at 1 pm on
Wednesday February 6th in Room 7 at Shepardson Center to discuss
"The Painted Drum" by Louise Erdrich

 
"Native American antiquities specialist Faye Travers, bereaved of her sister and father, ambivalently in love with a sculptor who has lost his wife and loses his daughter, stumbles onto a ceremonial drum when she handles the estate of John Jewett Tatro, whose grandfather was an agent at the Ojibwe reservation. Under its spell, she secretes it away and eventually repatriates it to that reservation on the northern plains—the home of her grandmother. The drum is revived, as are those around it. Gracefully weaving many threads, Erdrich details the multigenerational history surrounding the drum. Erdrich crafts a provocative read elevated by beautiful imagery, as when children near death fly off like skeletal ravens". 



January 2013

Front Cover
The Brown Bag Group will meet on Wednesday
January 2nd at 1 pm
to discuss "The Buddha in the Attic" by Julie Otsuka.




Please note that the venue for the meeting has now been confirmed. We will meet in Room 7 at Shepardson Center for our January and February meetings. Please call Sue at 203 758 2634 or at sshepherd@biblio.org for more information.

"Julie Otsuka’s long-awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago.
In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the picture brides’ extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.
In language that has the force and the fury of poetry, Julie Otsuka has written a singularly spellbinding novel about the American dream".



December 2012

The Brown Bag group will meet at 12 pm on Wednesday December 5th to discuss 
"The Christmas Train" 
by David Baldacci 


 "Tom Langdon is a former war reporter who now writes feature articles for various magazines. Banned from flying on airplanes after a hostile incident at an airport security checkpoint, Langdon is forced to take a cross-country train from Washington, D.C., to L.A., where his girlfriend is waiting to spend Christmas with him. As he begins talking to the passengers and staff aboard the train, he meets an eccentric older woman who seems to be a regular rider, a young couple preparing to marry on the train, and a former Catholic priest. To Tom's shock, the former love of his life, Eleanor, is also aboard the train. Sparks fly between them, bringing up old feelings along with the unresolved issues from their relationship. Tom realizes this might be his second chance with Eleanor, but a series of unexpected events may derail his plans. This latest Baldacci might not appeal to all of the fans who lap up his fast-paced thrillers, but the heartwarming holiday story might win him new fans who enjoy seasonal tales".

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