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 1:00 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 Donna Hine at 203-758-2634 or at donnahine1953@gmail.com.

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January 2014

Brown Bag Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, January 8th at 1:00 PM in the Middlebury Public Library’s Meeting Room to discuss The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The group is reading this in conjunction with the Avon Free Public Library’s series of events regarding The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, including “A Conversation With the Lacks Family” on Friday, March 14th at the Avon Free Library. For further information, please contact Donna at 203-758-2634.



Book Description:

“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first ‘immortal’ human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the ‘colored’ ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.”

(Image and book description provided courtesy of www.goodreads.com)

December 2013

The Brown Bag Book Discussion group will meet at the Middlebury Public Library on Wednesday, December 4th at 12:30 PM to discuss and watch the theatrical version of Debbie Macomber’s Trading Christmas. Please pre-register for this meeting as the library will be ordering wrap sandwiches. For additional information, please contact Donna at 203-758-2634.


“Emily Springer trades her Leavenworth, Washington, home for Charles Brewster’s Boston condo. Then Emily’s friend Faith comes to visit her in Washington — and instead finds Charles, a complete stranger and a curmudgeon, to boot. His brother, Ray, meanwhile shows up at Charlie’s place, only to discover Emily living there. But through all the mix-ups and misunderstandings, among the chaos and confusion, romance begins to emerge . . .”



(Image and book description provided courtesy of www.goodreads.com.)

November 2013

The Brown Bag Book Discussion Group will meet at the Middlebury Public Library on Wednesday, November 6th at 1:00 PM to discuss The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani. Books are available at the library. For more information, please contact Donna at 203-758-2634. All are welcome!


Book Description: “The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian Alps is the setting of the first meeting of Enza, a practical beauty, and Ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few miles apart. At the turn of the last century, when Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal, he is banished from his village and sent to hide in America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy. Without explanation, he leaves a bereft Enza behind. Soon, Enza’s family faces disaster and she, too, is forced to go to America with her father to secure their future.


 

Unbeknownst to one another, they both build fledgling lives in America, Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job in Hoboken until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza, determined to forge a life without him, begins her impressive career as a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera House that will sweep her into the glamorous salons of Manhattan and into the life of the international singing sensation, Enrico Caruso.


 

From the stately mansions of Carnegie Hill, to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy, over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy, to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota, these star-crossed lovers meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever.”





(Book description and cover provided courtesy of www.goodreads.com)


September 2013


The Brown Bag Book Discussion Group will meet at the Middlebury Public Library on Wednesday, September 18th at 1:00 PM to discuss The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian. Books are available at the library. For more information, please contact Donna at 203-758-2634. All are welcome! Please remember that we are temporarily located at 199 Park Road Ext. in Middlebury.


Book Description:

When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to refugees of the Armenian Genocide during the First World War. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling into Egypt to join the British Army, he begins to write Elizabeth letters, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American.

Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey back through her family’s history, uncovering a story of love, loss – and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.

(Image provided courtesy of www.goodreads.com.)



August 2013


The next meeting for the Brown Bag group will take place on Wednesday, August 7th at 1:00 pm. 

The book to be discussed is 
"The Sense of an Ending" 
by Julian Barnes. 

Please remember that we will be meeting at our temporary location, 199 Park Road Ext. in Middlebury.


"This intense new novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre."


Video courtesy of Tatum Schumann 

 

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