Bethel Public Library Programs

Dramatic Musical Performance: "Steinbeck Out Loud"
performed by Carol Birch
Tuesday, May 21
7:00-8:00 pm
Library Lobby

Nationally renowned storyteller Carol Birch will perform selections from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath along with songs from Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. The selections performed are some of the other stories in the novel–not those about the Joad family. In these stories, people's hearts close and open in tender and affecting ways, bringing us deep inside the world of this thoroughly American novel.
For adults and kids ages 12+.

Registration is required for this program.
Register online, at the Reference Desk, or call (203) 794-8756 ex 4.

Author Talk and Book Signing
with Michael Canavan
Monday, June 3
7:00-8:00 pm
Library Lobby

Michael Canavan is a New York-born writer, designer, and musician who makes his home in Connecticut. His book The Nature of the Beast is the story of the Wards, a middle class family living in the Bronx during the 1980's and 1990's, and the sometimes ironic, often catastrophic, and eventually deadly influence of alcohol on all their lives. Although only one family member is suffering from addiction, those around him suffer its effects and are driven to ever more desperate acts.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Registration is required for this program.
Register online, at the Reference Desk, or call (203) 794-8756 ex 4.

Music at the Library!
Pierce Campbell and the Kerry Boys
Tuesday, June 11
7:00-8:00 pm
Lincoln Courtyard, Library

The Kerry Boys are Connecticut's favorite Irish balladeers and have been performing together for over 23 years, dazzling fans of all ages from Maine to New York. Their humorous, high-energy show will have you clapping and singing along in no time, engaging you from start to finish with their wide collection of traditional and original Irish/Celtic songs. Pierce Campbell, Connecticut's official State Troubadour for 2007-2008, will be joined by Paul Neri on banjo and Tony Pasqualoni on bass for this show as they perform favorite songs from their 4 CD's as well as some of Pierce's popular originals. Please bring your folding chairs and blankets!

Registration is required for this program.
Register online, at the Reference Desk, or call (203) 794-8756 ex 4.

Events & Talks | Evening Book Discussions | Morning Book Discussions
Afternoon Book Discussions | Jane Austen Book Club

The Lost City of Z
by David Grann
Monday, June 10
6:30-7:45 pm

In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city.

Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction. He became interested in Fawcett while researching another story, eventually venturing into the Amazon to satisfy his all-consuming curiosity about the explorer and his fatal mission.

Largely about Fawcett, the book examines the stranglehold of passion as Grann's vigorous research mirrors Fawcett's obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle. By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale.

~adapted from the Publishers Weekly review

Swamplandia
by Karen Russell
Monday, July 8
6:30-7:45 pm

Russell's lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings and Swamplandia itself is endangered as audiences dwindle.

Russell shows profound knowledge of the great imperiled swamp, from its alligators and insects, floating orchids and invasive "strangler" melaleuca trees to the tragic history of its massacred indigenous people and wildlife. Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air.

~adapted from the Booklist review

A Good Year
by Peter Mayle
Monday, August 12
6:30-7:45 pm

Peter Mayle once again flings the doors wide open upon the sunny landscape and not-always-as-provincial-as-they-seem denizens of Provence in another of his wise, witty, and sophisticated novels that many equally sophisticated readers have developed quite an appetite for.

In the simplest of terms, this one is about the wine trade. Max Skinner is a young player in the London financial world who hasn't been performing up to snuff on the job lately. One day he finds himself demoted and left with no option but to resign from the firm. As fate would have it--the hand of God, in other words--Max simultaneously receives a letter informing him that his recently deceased and much-loved uncle has willed his estate and vineyard in Provence to Max. With money borrowed from his former brother-in-law, Max relocates there, and his true adventures begin.

~adapted from the Booklist review

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Monday, September 9
6:30-7:45 pm

A young man's burning desire to fulfill his "great expectations" of fame and fortune is presented in Charles Dickens's classic tale of love, madness, forgiveness, and redemption. Humbled, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. One of Dickens' finest novels, this is a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward.


~adapted from the Amazon.com review

Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Monday, October 7
6:30-7:45 pm

This prizewinning novel by New Zealand author Jones is an eloquent homage to the power of storytelling. Thirteen-year-old Matilda is at a loss to understand the violence that has torn apart her tropical island. Her village, caught in the cross fire of the conflict between government troops and local armed rebels, has lost its teachers. The only white man to stay behind, the eccentric Mr. Watts, married to a local woman who is generally thought to be mad, takes over the post as teacher and begins to read to the class from his favorite novel, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

Initially flummoxed by the meanings of such alien words as frost and moors, Matilda and her classmates soon become entirely riveted by the story and identify so heavily with the orphan Pip that Victorian England becomes more real to them than their own hometown. Provided with firsthand evidence of the power of imagination, Matilda increasingly sees it as a way to survive and even thrive amid the chaos of civil war. The accessible narrative, with its direct and graceful prose, belies the sophistication of its telling as Jones addresses head-on the effects of imperialism and the redemptive power of art.

~adapted from Booklist review

Events & Talks | Evening Book Discussions | Morning Book Discussions
Afternoon Book Discussions | Jane Austen Book Club

The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
by Julie Stuart
Wednesday, May 29
10:00-11:30 am

A Beefeater, his wife, and their nearly 180-year-old tortoise live in the Tower of London, and if Stuart's deadly charming sophomore novel is any indication, the fortress is as full of intrigue as ever.

Balthazar and Hebe Jones lost their son, Milo, to illness three years ago, and while Beefeater Balthazar grieves silently and obsessively collects rainwater in perfume bottles, Hebe wants to talk about their loss openly. Hebe works in the thematically convenient London Underground Lost Property Office, and the abandoned items that reside there are almost as peculiar as the unruly animals in the Tower's new menagerie, given to the queen and overseen by Balthazar.

Passion, desperation, and romantic shenanigans abound among the other Tower-dwellers: the Reverend, an erotic fiction writer, and the Ravenmaster who is cheating on his wife with the cook. Though the cuteness sometimes comes across a little thick, the love story is adorable.

~adapted from the Publishers Weekly review

The Lost City of Z
by David Grann
Wednesday, June 26
10:00-11:30 am

In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city.

Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction. He became interested in Fawcett while researching another story, eventually venturing into the Amazon to satisfy his all-consuming curiosity about the explorer and his fatal mission.

Largely about Fawcett, the book examines the stranglehold of passion as Grann's vigorous research mirrors Fawcett's obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle. By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale.

~adapted from the Publishers Weekly review

Swamplandia
by Karen Russell
Wednesday, July 31
10:15-11:30 am

Russell's lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings and Swamplandia itself is endangered as audiences dwindle.

Russell shows profound knowledge of the great imperiled swamp, from its alligators and insects, floating orchids and invasive "strangler" melaleuca trees to the tragic history of its massacred indigenous people and wildlife. Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air.

~adapted from the Booklist review

A Good Year
by Peter Mayle
Wednesday, August 28
10:15-11:30 am

Peter Mayle once again flings the doors wide open upon the sunny landscape and not-always-as-provincial-as-they-seem denizens of Provence in another of his wise, witty, and sophisticated novels that many equally sophisticated readers have developed quite an appetite for.

In the simplest of terms, this one is about the wine trade. Max Skinner is a young player in the London financial world who hasn't been performing up to snuff on the job lately. One day he finds himself demoted and left with no option but to resign from the firm. As fate would have it--the hand of God, in other words--Max simultaneously receives a letter informing him that his recently deceased and much-loved uncle has willed his estate and vineyard in Provence to Max. With money borrowed from his former brother-in-law, Max relocates there, and his true adventures begin.

~adapted from the Booklist review

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Wednesday September 25
10:15-11:30 am

A young man's burning desire to fulfill his "great expectations" of fame and fortune is presented in Charles Dickens's classic tale of love, madness, forgiveness, and redemption. Humbled, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. One of Dickens' finest novels, this is a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward.

~adapted from the Amazon.com review

Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Wednesday October 30
10:15-11:30 am

This prizewinning novel by New Zealand author Jones is an eloquent homage to the power of storytelling. Thirteen-year-old Matilda is at a loss to understand the violence that has torn apart her tropical island. Her village, caught in the cross fire of the conflict between government troops and local armed rebels, has lost its teachers. The only white man to stay behind, the eccentric Mr. Watts, married to a local woman who is generally thought to be mad, takes over the post as teacher and begins to read to the class from his favorite novel, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

Initially flummoxed by the meanings of such alien words as frost and moors, Matilda and her classmates soon become entirely riveted by the story and identify so heavily with the orphan Pip that Victorian England becomes more real to them than their own hometown. Provided with firsthand evidence of the power of imagination, Matilda increasingly sees it as a way to survive and even thrive amid the chaos of civil war. The accessible narrative, with its direct and graceful prose, belies the sophistication of its telling as Jones addresses head-on the effects of imperialism and the redemptive power of art.

~adapted from Booklist review

Events & Talks | Evening Book Discussions | Morning Book Discussions
Afternoon Book Discussions | Jane Austen Book Club

Afternoon Book Discussions at the Bethel Senior Center
on the First Tuesday of the Month 
Bethel Senior Center    

Please note that January book discussion will be held on the Second Tuesday of the month. 

The Lost City of Z
by David Grann
Tuesday, June 4
2:00-3:30 pm

In 1925, renowned British explorer Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett embarked on a much publicized search to find the city of Z, site of an ancient Amazonian civilization that may or may not have existed. Fawcett, along with his grown son Jack, never returned, but that didn't stop countless others, including actors, college professors and well-funded explorers from venturing into the jungle to find Fawcett or the city.

Among the wannabe explorers is Grann, a staff writer for the New Yorker, who has bad eyes and a worse sense of direction. He became interested in Fawcett while researching another story, eventually venturing into the Amazon to satisfy his all-consuming curiosity about the explorer and his fatal mission.

Largely about Fawcett, the book examines the stranglehold of passion as Grann's vigorous research mirrors Fawcett's obsession with uncovering the mysteries of the jungle. By interweaving the great story of Fawcett with his own investigative escapades in South America and Britain, Grann provides an in-depth, captivating character study that has the relentless energy of a classic adventure tale.

~adapted from the Publishers Weekly review

Swamplandia
by Karen Russell
Tuesday, July 2
2:00-3:30 pm

Russell's lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted first novel sprang from a story in her highly praised collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings and Swamplandia itself is endangered as audiences dwindle.

Russell shows profound knowledge of the great imperiled swamp, from its alligators and insects, floating orchids and invasive "strangler" melaleuca trees to the tragic history of its massacred indigenous people and wildlife. Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell's archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air.

~adapted from the Booklist review

A Good Year
by Peter Mayle
Tuesday, August 6
2:00-3:30 pm

Peter Mayle once again flings the doors wide open upon the sunny landscape and not-always-as-provincial-as-they-seem denizens of Provence in another of his wise, witty, and sophisticated novels that many equally sophisticated readers have developed quite an appetite for.

In the simplest of terms, this one is about the wine trade. Max Skinner is a young player in the London financial world who hasn't been performing up to snuff on the job lately. One day he finds himself demoted and left with no option but to resign from the firm. As fate would have it--the hand of God, in other words--Max simultaneously receives a letter informing him that his recently deceased and much-loved uncle has willed his estate and vineyard in Provence to Max. With money borrowed from his former brother-in-law, Max relocates there, and his true adventures begin.

~adapted from the Booklist review

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Tuesday, September 3
2:00-3:30 pm

A young man's burning desire to fulfill his "great expectations" of fame and fortune is presented in Charles Dickens's classic tale of love, madness, forgiveness, and redemption. Humbled, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman. One of Dickens' finest novels, this is a gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward.

~adapted from the Amazon.com review

Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
Tuesday, October 1
2:00-3:30 pm

This prizewinning novel by New Zealand author Jones is an eloquent homage to the power of storytelling. Thirteen-year-old Matilda is at a loss to understand the violence that has torn apart her tropical island. Her village, caught in the cross fire of the conflict between government troops and local armed rebels, has lost its teachers. The only white man to stay behind, the eccentric Mr. Watts, married to a local woman who is generally thought to be mad, takes over the post as teacher and begins to read to the class from his favorite novel, Charles Dickens' Great Expectations.

Initially flummoxed by the meanings of such alien words as frost and moors, Matilda and her classmates soon become entirely riveted by the story and identify so heavily with the orphan Pip that Victorian England becomes more real to them than their own hometown. Provided with firsthand evidence of the power of imagination, Matilda increasingly sees it as a way to survive and even thrive amid the chaos of civil war. The accessible narrative, with its direct and graceful prose, belies the sophistication of its telling as Jones addresses head-on the effects of imperialism and the redemptive power of art.

~adapted from Booklist review

Events & Talks | Evening Book Discussions | Morning Book Discussions
Afternoon Book Discussions | Jane Austen Book Club

"Jane Austen Book Club"

Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
Wednesday, June 19
6:30-8:00 pm

Jane Austen's first major novel was written in 1798-99, when she was in her early twenties. It is a comic love story set in Bath about a young reader who must learn how to separate fantasy from reality. Miss Austen sold the novel (then entitled Susan) to a publisher in 1803, and the work was advertised but never published. She bought it back many years later, and her brother Henry Austen published the novel as Northanger Abbey after her death in 1817.

~from the Austen.com review

Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
Wednesday, August 21
6:30-8:00 pm

Mansfield Park was written between February, 1811 and the summer of 1813. It was the third novel Jane Austen had published and it first appeared on May 4, 1814. During her lifetime, it was attributed only to "The author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice", and the author's identity was unknown beyond her family and friends. It is Jane Austen's most complex novel and deals with many different themes, from the education of children, to the differences between appearances and reality.

Emma
by Jane Austen
Wednesday, October 16
6:30-8:00 pm

Emma was written in 1814-1815, and while Jane Austen was writing it, it was suggested to her by a member of the Prince Regents' household that she dedicate it to His Royal Highness. Austen took the suggestion as it was intended--as a command--and Emma was thus dedicated, but the dedication itself is rather slyly worded. Emma deals with a young woman's transition into adulthood and the trouble she gets herself into along the way.

Persuasion
by Jane Austen
Wednesday, December 18
6:30-8:00 pm

Persuasion was written in 1815-1816, while Jane Austen was suffering from her fatal illness. She was still working on some revisions at the time of her death in 1817. The novel was published posthumously by her brother, Henry Austen. Persuasion is a novel of second chances, expectations of society, and the constancy of love.