Literary Giants Book Club

Literary Giants: The Glass Castle

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, January 25, 2010 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices.

Literary Giants - Mr. Vertigo

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

Walter Claireborne Rawley is renowned nationwide as "Walt the Wonder Boy." It is the late 1920's, and Walt is a Saint Louis orphan rescued from the streets by the mysterious Hungarian Master Yehudi, who teaches Walt to walk on air. The vaudeville act that results from Walt's marvelous new ability takes them across a vast and vibrant country, where they meet and fall prey to sinners, thieves, and villains, from the Kansas Ku Klux Klan to the Chicago mob.

Literary Giants - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, November 30, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into his world, his island, his friends' taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives.

Literary Giants - Lonesome Dove

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, October 26, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

A love story and an epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last, defiant wilderness of America. Richly authentic, beautifully written, Lonesome Dove is a book to make readers laugh, weep, dream and remember.

Literary Giants - Slaughterhouse-Five

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, September 28, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes 'unstuck in time' after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Literary Giants - Run

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, August 31, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

Boston lawyer and ex-politician Bernard Doyle has nurtured his three sons -- Sullivan and adopted brothers Tip and Teddy -- since the death of his wife 15 years ago. Then, one snowy evening, Tip is pushed out of the way of an oncoming vehicle by a woman, herself hit and badly injured, who turns out to be the boys' birth mother and who's been watching the boys for years, along with her 11-year-old daughter, Kenya. The drama of a single day is given an unreal quality by the snow that curtails normal activity, as these vividly portrayed characters struggle with their circumstances.

Literary Giants: The Lovely Bones

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, April 28, 2003 - 7:30pm - 8:30pm

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. (Club Rating: 6.5)

Literary Giants: Suite Française

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, January 26, 2009 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

Beginning in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation in 1940. Suite Française tells the remarkable story of men and women thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. As Parisians flee the city, human folly surfaces in every imaginable way: a wealthy mother searches for sweets in a town without food; a couple is terrified at the thought of losing their jobs, even as their world begins to fall apart.

Literary Giants: The Great Gatsby

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, March 27, 2006 - 6:30pm - 7:30pm

The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. Many consider The Great Gatsby the closest thing to the Great American Novel ever written. First published in 1925, it is the timeless story of Jay Gatsby and his love for Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby seeks to keep his illusion of Daisy as perfect alive. He uses his money, gained through illegal means, to do so, and uses his neighbor, Nick Carroway, to try to reach Daisy. The love of money as the root of evil is a pervading theme.

Literary Giants: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Location: Madison Public Library
Date: Monday, August 30, 2004 - 7:30pm - 8:30pm

"Uproariously funny" doesn't seem a likely description for a book on cadavers. However, Roach, a Salon and Reader's Digest columnist, has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty. In her droll, intimate voice, Roach conducts an oddly compelling, often hilarious forensic exploration of the strange lives of bodies postmortem.

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