VILA BOOK CLUB
Please join us for the next meeting of the VILA Book Club sponsored by iBUG Today. We will be discussing the following book.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine: A Novel by Gail Honeyman, DB87829
Socially awkward and perpetually cranky, Eleanor works a boring office job and avoids dealing with other people whenever possible. She begins to open up after she develops a crush on a local musician and also becomes friendly with Raymond, the new IT guy. 11 hours, 3 minutes
WHEN: Thursday, April 11, 2024, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Central Time
Facilitator: Sarah Potek
The VILA Book Club is held on the Zoom conference platform.
Join the Zoom meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/7428486329?pwd=M003RmZaa3pTbWRlZ00xbSs4YTlmUT09
One tap mobile from a smartphone: +1 346 248 7799,,7428486329# US
Dial from a landline: +1 346 248 7799 US
Meeting ID: 742 848 6329, Password: 369978
Future book readings for the next couple of months are as follows. Note: all books are available on NLS BARD.
May 9
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, DB110786 (Sarah Potek)
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It's the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind. 21 hours, 6 minutes
June 13
The Lost Summers of Newport by Karen White, DB108913 (Angie Panzica) 2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class--famous for the lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia "Lucky" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse. 1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport's elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall. 1958: Lucia "Lucky" Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother--the American-born Princess di Conti--fled Mussolini's Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, thealcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion's old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth... and change everything she thought she knew about her past. As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets theSpragues thought would stay hidden forever. 13 hours, 14 minutes