2017 Debut
Shown below are past book picks for the Fircrest Book Club’s inaugural 2017 Spring season. The discussion date for each book is noted below its title.
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2017 February 1st marked the inaugural meeting of the Fircrest Road Book Club with eight members attending to discuss the meeting schedule, book selections, and book discussion format. From this, it...More
Description:
2017 February 1st marked the inaugural meeting of the Fircrest Road Book Club with eight members attending to discuss the meeting schedule, book selections, and book discussion format. From this, it was agreed that the meetings to follow will take place on the first Monday of each month unless that date is a holiday, in which case it is shifted instead to the second Monday. Members will endeavour to host our book club meetings on a rotating basis if/when practical.
Welcome all to the Fircrest (Road) Book Club!
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s child...More
Description:
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird . Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – &...More
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A landmark new novel from Harper Lee, set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird . Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch - 'Scout' - returns home from New York City to visit her ageing father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird , Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past - a journey that can be guided only by one's own conscience. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humour and effortless precision - a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird , but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to a classic.
An irresistibly joyful memoir of mothers and daughters, and the importance of home. When Lorna’s great-grandfather, William Harvey, discovered a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of ...More
Description:
An irresistibly joyful memoir of mothers and daughters, and the importance of home.
When Lorna's great-grandfather, William Harvey, discovered a clearing at the end of a path cut by the feet of escaping slaves, he gives his name to what became his family's home for generations. For Lorna's mother, Doris, Jamaica's Harvey River was the place she always called home, where she was one of the 'fabulous Harvey girls' and the rich local bounty of yams, pimentos and mangoes went hand in hand with the Victorian niceties and comforts of her parents' house. Doris was a big-hearted lover of big stories and raised Lorna on tales of their family's - and Jamaica's - history. Years later, when her fortunes changed, it was a place she returned to in her dreams She and her husband relocated to 'hard life' Kingston and encountered the harsh realities of urban living at close quarters as they raised their family of nine children.
Gorgeously written with unashamed joy and peopled with a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, Lorna Goodison's memoir weaves together memory and island lore to create a vivid and universally appealing tapestry.
Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its...More
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Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week...More
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In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…
With surprising twists, spine-tingling turns, and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up another taut and intense read in The Woman in Cabin 10—one that will leave even the most sure-footed reader restlessly uneasy long after the last page is turned.
July is a “free read” month with no designated book title, so enjoy the Summer break with a good book of your choosing. If you wish, feel free to present it and/or other book titles at o...More
Description:
July is a "free read" month with no designated book title, so enjoy the Summer break with a good book of your choosing. If you wish, feel free to present it and/or other book titles at our July 31st meeting as possible selections for our 2017/2018 reading season.