Here is the schedule of books being read and discussed by Project Read's Wednesday Night Readers book club over the next few months. Please discuss these titles with your learner and make plans to pick up your FREE books and audio books and attend one of these exciting discussions. We make unabridged audio books available so that learners at any reading level can participate in the discussion. And look for special Movie Nights when we show film versions of these titles.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (discussed at June 25th meeting, books/audio books available May 28)
Of all Steinbeck's novellas, Cannery Row is the simplest story. It presents a slice of the lives of the men and women who populate a strip of sardine canneries after the workers go home. Set on California's Monterey Peninsula in the days long before famed golf courses and resorts, this post-depression tale depicts the life of an uproarious cast of characters: Lee Chong, the philosophical grocery store proprietor; Doc, the owner of the Western Biological Laboratory; Dora, the charitable Madame of the Bear Flag Restaurant, Mack, Hazel and Eddie and Hughie and Jones, the well-meaning residents of the Palace Flophouse, and, most important, Cannery Row herself, in all her ugliness and beauty, peace and violence. (192 pages)
Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (discussed at July 30 meeting, available June 25)
Because of Winn-Dixie, a big, ugly, happy dog, 10-year-old Opal learns 10 things about her long-gone mother from her preacher father. Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal makes new friends among the somewhat unusual residents of her new hometown, Naomi, Florida. Because of Winn-Dixie, Opal begins to find her place in the world and let go of some of the sadness left by her mother's abandonment seven years earlier. With her newly adopted, goofy pooch at her side, Opal explores her bittersweet world and learns to listen to other people's lives. This warm and winning book hosts an unforgettable cast of characters (192 pages)
The Natural by Bernard Malmud (discussed at August 27 meeting, available July 30)
Bernard Malamud’s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. It is the story of a superbly gifted “natural” at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era. This novel was the basis of the film of the same name starring Robert Redford. (237 pages)
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell (discussed at September 24 meeting, available August 27)
What do you get when a woman who's obsessed with death and U.S. history goes on vacation? -- This wacky, weirdly enthralling exploration of the first three presidential assassinations. Vowell, a contributor to NPR's This American Life, takes readers on a pilgrimage of sorts to the sites and monuments that pay homage to Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, visiting everything from grave sites and simple plaques to places like the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where fragments of Lincoln's skull are on display. An expert tour guide, Vowell brings into sharp focus not only the figures involved in the assassinations, but the social and political circumstances that led to each-and she does so in the witty, sometimes irreverent manner that her fans have come to expect. (272 pages)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (discussed at October 29 meeting, available September 24)
On a quiet fall evening in the small, peaceful town of Mill Valley, California, Dr. Miles Bennell discovered an insidious, horrifying plot. Silently, subtly, almost imperceptibly, alien life-forms were taking over the bodies and minds of his neighbors, his friends, his family, the woman he loved -- the world as he knew it. First published in 1955, this classic thriller of the ultimate alien invasion and the triumph of the human spirit over an invisible enemy inspired three major motion pictures. (224 pages)
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