EVENING BOOK CLUB
The WLS Evening Book Club is a very simple affair, open to all. Here’s how to join:
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Borrow one of our library copies free of charge.
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Hop online from 7-8 p.m. each First Wednesday for some great conversation!
New to book clubs? Come join us! There’s nothing quite like the pleasure of talking about something you just read with some nice folks who’ve read it, too.
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We hold our meetings on Zoom, so you can join us right from your favourite reading chair. New to Zoom? It’s easy—we’ll help you connect.
Library copies are first come, first served (you can also buy your own at one from our friends at the Wairarapa’s many great local bookstores.)
Any questions, contact library@wls.org.nz.Readers of the Wairarapa, you are never alone!
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Wednesday 4 October: Amazing Grace Adams
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In October we’ll be discussing Fran Littlewood’s debut, Amazing Grace Adams.
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The blurb...
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Grace Adams is one bad day away from saving her life.
One hot summer day, stuck in traffic on her way to pick up the cake for her daughter's sixteenth birthday party, Grace Adams snaps.
She doesn't scream or break something or cry or curl into a ball. She simply abandons her car in traffic and walks away. But not from her life - towards it. Towards the daughter who has banned her from the party. Towards the husband divorcing her.
Towards the terrible thing that has blown their family apart . . .
She'll show her daughter that no matter how far we fall, we can always get back up. Because Grace Adams was amazing. The world and her family might have forgotten. But Grace is about to remind them...
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About Fran Littlewood
Fran Littlewood has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. She was taught by Andrew Motion and passed with distinction. Before that she worked as a journalist, including a stint at The Times. She lives in north London with her husband and their three girls. AMAZING GRACE ADAMS is her debut novel.
Want to see what other readers thought of it? Here are a couple of reviews:
• Clare Clark in The Guardian
• Sara Austin in The New York Times​
THIS MONTH
PAST TITLES:
Here are the books we’ve read and enjoyed! Want to read them in your own book club? Contact library@wls.org.nz about checking out a free book club set of any title.
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September 2023
Where Light Meets Water, by Susan Paterson.
An evocative novel of love and art, and one man's journey to find his place in the world. Where Light Meets Water is a moving debut traversing nineteenth-century London, Melbourne and New Zealand...
August 2023
The Hero of This Book,by Elizabeth McCracken.
“I've always hated the notion, in life or in fiction, that the human personality is a puzzle to be solved, that we are a single flashback away from understanding why this person is cruel to her children, why that man has a dreamy, downcast look. A human being is not a lock and the past is not a key.”
July 2023
“The tragedy of life isn't that the end comes. That's the gift. Without an end, there's nothing. There's no meaning. Do you see? A moment isn't a moment. A moment is an eternity.
A moment should mean something. It should be everything.”
June 2023
“He had known then the value of his ancient homelands: that India was many complexities of tribe and dialect and ritual woven together, an inextricable fabric of pulsating life. How could anyone put borders on that?”
May 2023
The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan’s
“A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world.”
April 2023
In the Eye of the Wild, by Natassja Martin’s
“The sounds I hear are enhanced. I hear like a wild animal, I am that wild animal. I wonder for a moment whether the bear will come back to finish me off, or to be killed by me, or indeed for us both to die in a final embrace.”
March 2023
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka.
“Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.”
February 2023
The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li.
“There are different ways to measure depth, but not many readers measure a book's depth with a knife, making a cut from the first page all the way down to the last.”
December 2022
“How is anyone going to get sick from walking a few miles over the moor and standing on a hillside in the wind?”
November 2022
The Last White Man, by Mohsin Hamid
“... a white man had indeed shot a dark man, but also that the dark man and the white man were the same.”
October 2022
The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan.
“The need for personal glory is like cigarette addiction: a habit that feels life-sustaining
even as it kills you.”
September 2022
Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt.
“Humans… For the most part you are dull and blundering. But occasionally you can be remarkably bright creatures.”
August 2022
The Bookseller at the End of the World, by Ruth Shaw
“‘I expressed my condolences and spoke about how often we are taken by surprise when someone dies. I have always believed everyone has a story to tell’”
July 2022
Something New Under the Sun, by Alexandra Kleeman
“Why was the only choice paper or plastic, rathern than being able to choose to buy nothing at all?”
June 2022
Strange Beasts of China, by Yan Ge.
“‘My mother used to tell me, ‘You can’t be sure that beasts aren’t people, or that people aren’t just another type of beast.’”
May 2022
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.
“‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.’”
April 2022
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly
"There comes a time of night when it becomes okay to sit on the ground, even away from parks and boulders and other natural sitting spots."
March 2022
Lea Ypi, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
“When you see a system change once, it’s not that difficult to believe that it can change again."
February 2022
Sue Orr, Loop Tracks
"The first time I got on an aeroplane, I was sixteen years old and pregnant."
December 2021
Doireann Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat
“This is a female text, written in the twenty-first century. How late it is. How much has changed. How little.”
November 2021
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You
“Maybe we’re just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn’t it in a way the nicest reason to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine?”
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