RT Library Lunchtime Book Club
Bring your lunch and join us for the Lunchtime Book Club. We meet at Rockaway Township Library on the third Tuesday afternoon each month from 11:45am – 1:00pm.
Registration is not required: you are welcome to join us for any discussion.
RT Library obtains copies of each month’s selection which are then borrowed by book club members.
For more information, call the library at 973-627-2344 or email us at rockawaytwplibrary@rtlibrary.org.
Please make sure to give your e-mail to Pierre so that he can sign you up for our Lunchtime Bookclub’s e-newsletter to get special announcements and last minute book club meeting date changes.
Current Selection
June’s Selection: Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout Tuesday, June 19 2018 at 11:45 am
“A collection of stories tell of two sisters: one trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.”
Next Month’s Selection
July’s Selection: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen Tuesday, July 17 2018 at 11:45 am
“Andrew Yancy, late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police, has a human arm in his freezer. There is a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, his commander might relieve him of Health Inspector duties, aka Roach Patrol.” But first Yancy will negotiate an ever-surprising course of events, from the Keys to Miami to a Bahamian out island, with a crew of equally ever-surprising characters, including: the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; an avariciously idiotic real estate developer; a voodoo witch whose lovers are blinded-unto-death by her particularly peculiar charms; Yancy’s new love, a kinky medical examiner; and the eponymous Bad Monkey.”
Upcoming Selections (Monthly Order is Tentative and subject to change)
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Autumn by Ali Smith
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
Churchill and Orwell: The fight for freedom by Thomas Ricks
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Forest dark : a novel by Nicole Krauss (May 2018)
“A National Book Award finalist, Anisfield-Wolf Award winner….New Yorker Twenty Under Forty, and New York Times best-selling author, Krauss tells the story of larger-than-life Jules Epstein. Now retired, and with his parents dead and his marriage over, he gives away most of his possessions and heads to Israel, where he becomes involved with a dynamic American rabbi planning a reunion of King David’s descendants. Meanwhile, a young American novelist arrives at a Tel Aviv hotel and is offered the project of a lifetime.”
4 3 2 1 by Fredrik Backman (April 2018)
“An epic bildungsroman . . . . Original and complex . . . . A monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes.”-Tom Perrotta, The New York Times Book Review
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (February 2018)
The man in the high castle by Philip K. Dick (December 19, 2017)
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett (November 21, 2017)
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (October 17, 2017)
September 2017 Dune by Frank Herbert
June 20, 2017 Barkskins : a novel by Annie Proulx
April 2017 Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
March 2017 Free Reading!
Select your own book club book that you’ve never read before (and that’s not on our to-read list below) and then give us a 5 minute oral presentation about why you loved the book!
February 2017 All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.
January 2017 Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
December, 2017 The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks.
“An aging King David reflects upon the battles, loves, and the slaying of a giant that have brought him to his prophesied glory. He requests his longtime confidant, Natan, to visit the key players in his life and chronicle his unvarnished past. Having witnessed as a child his father’s death at David’s hand, Natan knows firsthand about the flawed king and wonders what good will come of recording the reminiscences of the people who have reason to hate David.”
-Library Journal
October, 2017 The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
When a successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be–until they find a love letter he wrote many years before, to a Burmese woman they never heard of.
August 16, 2016 Dead Wake by Erik Larson
In this accessible account for general readers, he offers a chronological narrative of the sinking of the luxury ocean liner the Lusitania in May 1915. Alternating between German and British civilian, military, and government perspectives, the author uses techniques of suspense and romance, while drawing on primary sources. Throughout the book, anything in quotes comes from real-life sources such as memoirs, letters, telegrams, or other historical documents.
July 19, 2016 Home Front by Kristin Hannah
Struggling with a marital estrangement that is further complicated when one of them is deployed, military couple Michael and Joleen Zarkades are forced to confront their problems while protecting the security of their family in the wake of a brutal tragedy
June 21, 2016 The Hurricane Sisters by Dorothea Benton Frank
When an emotional hurricane blows through their lives, testing them in ways they never thought possible, 23-year-old Ashley Anne Waters, her mother Liz and Maisie, the family matriarch, must turn to each other for strength and support as the bonds they share are ultimately transformed.
April 19, 2016 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
A teenage girl goes missing and is later found to have drowned in a nearby lake, and suddenly a once tight-knit family unravels in unexpected ways….tantalizingly thrilling, Ng’s emotionally complex debut novel captures the tension between cultures and generations with the deft touch of a seasoned writer.
March 15, 2016 Me before you by Jojo Moyes
Taking a job as an assistant to extreme sports enthusiast Will, who is wheelchair bound after a motorcycle accident, Louisa struggles with her employer’s acerbic moods and learns of his shocking plans before demonstrating to him that life is still worth living.
February 16, 2016 The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
January 19, 2016 The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
“After World War I, Tom Sherbourne takes a job as lighthouse keeper on isolated Janus Rock, off the coast of Australia, where the supply boat comes only four times a year. His spunky wife, Isabel, suffers two miscarriages and a still birth in three years, so it’s no surprise that when a boat washes up carrying a dead man and a live baby, Isabel persuades Tom not to report the incident and takes the baby as hers. That causes trouble, of course, when they eventually return to the mainland. Big in-house excitement for this first novel, which will be backed by NPR coverage and a reading group guide. Tops on my reading list.”
-Library Journal
December 15, 2015 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
“Every day, Rachel takes the same London commuter train and passes the same suburban scenery, yet one house catches her eye—mainly because of the married couple she glimpses living there. This leads Rachel to conjure up an entire dream life for this husband and wife, even naming them and giving them make-believe careers. Rachel’s life has been spiraling downward, and her fantasy about this couple gives her a little joy. But all is not what it seems and Rachel is soon embroiled in a murderous thriller.
-Library Journal, vol 139, issue 17, p80”
November 17, 2015 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
(2013, Fiction, 771 pgs)
“In Tartt’s much-anticipated latest, following 1992’s The Secret History and 2002’s The Little Friend, young Theo survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, he lives with a friend’s family in New York, where his obsession with a small painting that reminds him of his mother leads him to the art underworld. With a 250,000-copy first printing and what’s billed as a social media extravaganza.’
October 20, 2015 Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
(1996, Epic fiction; Fantasy fiction, 835 pgs.)
“In a world where the approaching winter will last four decades, kings and queens, knights and renegades struggle for control of a throne. Some fight with sword and mace, others with magic and poison. Beyond the Wall to the north, meanwhile, the Others are preparing their army of the dead to march south as the warmth of summer drains from the land….When Lord Stark of Winterfell, an honest man, comes south to act as the King’s chief councilor, no amount of heroism or good intentions can keep the realm under control. It is fascinating to watch Martin’s characters mature and grow, particularly Stark’s children, who stand at the center of the book. Martin’s trophy case is already stuffed with major prizes, including Hugos, Nebulas, Locus Awards and a Bram Stoker. He’s probably going to have to add another shelf, at least.”
-Publishers Weekly, 1996
Older Selections
July 21, 2015 Mary by Janis Cooke Newman
June 16, 2015 The boys in the boat
May 19, 2015 Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
Apr 14, 2015 On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Mar 17, 2015 Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Feb 17, 2015 All-of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
Jan 20, 2014 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Dec 16, 2014 Vanished Smile
Nov 18, 2014 Half the Sky
Oct 21, 2014 The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Sept 16, 2014 Stones from the River
Aug 19, 2014 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See