Seymour
Public
Library

Book groups

Seymour Library sponsors a variety of book groups for readers with diverse interests. Coffee and Conversation book clubs meets monthly, with one group meeting on Mondays at 7 p.m. and the other group meeting Thursday mornings at 10 a.m.

The library also sponsors a monthly Coffee and Crime Mystery Book Group, which usually meets at noon the second Tuesday of the month. The mystery book club looks at a different theme each month.  Participants are asked to read one of the suggested titles that represent the theme. Anyone with an interest in mysteries is invited to join.

Click on the links to see what books the clubs are reading. For information on Seymour Library book clubs, contact Lisa Carr at lcarr@seymourlibrary.org or call the library at 252-2571.

Read a feature story on our book clubs from The Post-Standard.

Return to Seymour Library Web page
See 2008 and 2009 selections

Thursday Morning Book Group

2010 selections

Monday Evening Book Group 

2010 selections

Book details:

July 19: Keeping Corner Kashmira Sheth (Grades 6 - 9.) Married at age 9, 12-year-old Leela looks forward to her anu, the ceremony to send her to her husband's home. Instead, his sudden death forces the young widow to stay in her own home for a year and face a bleak future. Suddenly, her life is "living death." The privileged Brahmin child living in rural India in 1918 can no longer wear the brightly colored clothing and beautiful jewelry she loves; her head is shaved. Even after her year in isolation, others will shun her or worse. Luckily for Leela, her older brother finds a teacher to tutor her, preparing her for examinations that might allow her to go on to school and a career in a less traditional city, if her family can be convinced. Thanks to the teacher's assignment to note and record details of the simple world in which Leela is confined, readers are immersed in sensory detail: the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that surround her. Leela reads the newspaper, learning about Gandhi, whose influence is just beginning to be felt in a series of nonviolent protests. Her recognition of the unfairness of her situation and her growing personal strength is paralleled by changes in her country, long ruled by the English and by rigid tradition.

August 16: Going Bovine by Libba Bray. (High school.) When sixteen-year-old Cameron was five, he jumped ship on the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World and nearly drowned. "The thing is, before they pulled me out, everything had seemed made of magic...But the minute I came to on the hard, glittery, spray-painted, fake snow...I realized it was all a big fake. The realest thing I'd ever experienced was that moment under the water when I almost died." This sets the theme for the even wilder ride that follows, when Cameron's erratic behavior leads to a diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob (a.k.a. mad cow) disease. With the student body that used to ignore him throwing a save-Cameron pep rally and decorating the gym with paper cows, Cameron and his friend Gonzo, a hypochondriac dwarf, flee the hospital on a mission (as detailed by a punk-rock angel named Dulcie) to save the world from "dark energy" -- or do they? Bray gleefully tosses a hallucinogenic mix of elements into the adventure -- snow globes, fire demons, a talking yard gnome, a demon-fighting New Orleans jazz musician, and more -- but their origins can all be found in Cameron's mundane pre-diagnosis life. So is his trip "just a ride," as his Mom once told him about "It's a Small World"? Readers will have a great time trying to sort everything out and answer the question at the heart of it all: even if Cameron's experiences are all a dream, are they any less real? (From HORN BOOK)

Coffee and Crime mystery book club

January: Bibliomysteries and librarians: A Grand Complication by Allen Kurzweil., Ex-Libris by Ross King, The Name of the Rose by Eco Umberto.

February: Edgar Award winners: Blue Heaven by  C.J. Box, The Foreigner by Francie Lin,
China Lake by Meg Gardiner, Down River by John Hart, In the Woods by Tana French.

March: Teen Mysteries. What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd. The Crazy School by Cornelia Read.

April: The Big Easy - mysteries set in New Orleans. Pelikan: Love, Redemption and Felony Theft by David Lozell Martin, Dinner at Antoine’s by Frances Parkinson Keyes, Down in the Flood by Kenneth Abel, Purple Cane Road by James Lee Burke, House of Blues by Julie Smith.

May: Mysteries set in the Middle East: Damascus Gate by Robert Stone, Brittania Contract by Paul Mann, Fist of God by Frederick Forsyth, any of the books featuring Jerusalem police Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon by Batya Gur.

June: On the Run - mysteries with a pursuit theme. Dead Aim by Thomas Perry. Beautiful Dreamer by C. Bigsby. Sweet and Vicious by David Schickler. Anyone's Daughter by Shana Alexander (true crime). Leavenworth Train: A Fugitive's Search for Justice in the Vanishing West by Joe Jackson (biography).

noon Tuesday, July 13: The Jane Austen mysteries by Stephanie Barron.