Choose Your Own Book-Discussion

Read any book by or about a woman and come discuss it with us. It can be from the list of book recommendations on the event registration page, or choose your own book. Be ready to discuss what you liked or disliked about your book and if you would recommend it!
 

Recommendations 
 This is a list to get you started, feel free to choose something off of this list or read a different book not on this list! 

March is Women’s history month, so please read 1 book by or about a woman and come prepared to tell us a little about it and if you would recommend it to the group! Check for these and other books on the library shelves or go on Libby for an ebook or audiobook!

Fiction

• Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by: Gail Honeyman

"Smart, warm, uplifting, the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes the only way to survive is to open her heart..."

• The secret life of bees by: Sue Monk Kidd

“After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.”

• Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe by: Fannie Flagg

Elderly Mrs. Threadgoode relates the story of her life and of her best friend, Ruth, who ran the Whistle Stop Cafe in Alabama in the thirties.

• Where the crawdads sing by: Delia Owens

"For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say."

Shorter Fiction (about 150 pages or less)

• The empress of salt and fortune by: Nghi Vo

 At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

• We have always lived in the castle / Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

• The bookshop by: Penelope Fitzgerald

“…follows a kindhearted English widow's struggle to open a bookshop in a seaside town against the polite but uncompromising opposition of the town's arbiters of culture. “ 

Non-Fiction

• I am Malala : the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban by: Malala Yousafzai

“When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.”

• The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women by: Kate Moore.   

“The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories.”

• The book of hope : a survival guide for trying times by: Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams

“Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better world…”

Graphic novels 

• Ducks : two years in the oil sands by: Kate Beaton

With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush-part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed....

• Through the woods by: stories by Emily Carroll

“Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong…”

• Monstress. Volume one : awakening / Marjorie Liu

"Set in an alternate world of art deco beauty and steampunk horror, Monstress tells the epic story of Maika Halfwolf, a teenage survivor of a cataclysmic war between humans and their hated enemies, the Arcanics. In the face of oppression and terrible danger, Maika is both hunter and hunted, searching for answers about her mysterious past as those who seek to use her remain just one step behind... and all the while, the monster within begins to awake