PAST TITLES 2023:
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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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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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?”
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.”
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.”
September 2023
Where Light Meets Water, by Susan Paterson.
“…Eventually you pick up the brush to hear the sound of your own voice.”
October 2023
Amazing Grace Adams, by Fran Littlewood
“It was because of the guilt. The same guilt Grace feels. The universal mothering guilt that is surely implanted in the delivery room along with that Pitocin shot. One out, one in. This crazed truth that no matter how hard they try, mothers feel they have failed their kids, that they are not good enough, not quite up to the job.”
November 2023
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
December 2023
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff.
“Men like him would always look at her and see the things they were glad they weren't: weak, small, timid, powerless. Let them. She'd expended so much energy vying for a broken seat at an uneven table.”
