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DISCUSSION GUIDES
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Piglet: A NovelSummary:An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites―and the truth about having it all
Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.
But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.
A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us. - 132.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: A NovelSummary:The wise and charming international bestseller and hit Japanese movie—about a young woman who loses everything but finds herself—a tale of new beginnings, romantic and family relationships, and the comfort that can be found in books.
Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence—until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru.
An unusual man who has always pursued something of an unconventional life, especially after his wife Momoko left him out of the blue five years earlier, Satoru runs a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo’s famous book district. Takako once looked down upon Satoru’s life. Now, she reluctantly accepts his offer of the tiny room above the bookshop rent-free in exchange for helping out at the store. The move is temporary, until she can get back on her feet. But in the months that follow, Takako surprises herself when she develops a passion for Japanese literature, becomes a regular at a local coffee shop where she makes new friends, and eventually meets a young editor from a nearby publishing house who’s going through his own messy breakup.
But just as she begins to find joy again, Hideaki reappears, forcing Takako to rely once again on her uncle, whose own life has begun to unravel. Together, these seeming opposites work to understand each other and themselves as they continue to share the wisdom they’ve gained in the bookshop.
Translated By Eric Ozawa
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The Guest: A NovelSummary:New York Times bestselling author B. A. Paris captivated psychological thriller readers everywhere with Behind Closed Doors. Now she invites you into another home full of heart-pounding secrets, in The Guest.
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Mutual InterestSummary:A classic in the making: a mesmerizing novel about marriage and ambition, sexuality and secrecy, and the true costs of building an empire.
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We Do Not Part: A NovelSummary:Han Kang's most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history.
One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama. A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn’t yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend’s house.
Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be. - 136.
Dead Girls TalkingSummary:Gritty, gripping, and propulsive from page one, Dead Girls Talking is a ride for readers who love to see girls get their hands dirty as they claw their way to the truth. Peterson's knife-sharp thriller cuts deep, with a wicked sense of humor, a wire-taut atmosphere, and a deadly serious approach to bigger issues of justice and female anger.
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Let the Great World Spin: A NovelSummary: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Colum McCann’s beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit’s daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt
In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.
Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.”
A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.
Praise for Let the Great World Spin
“This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it’s a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There’s so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”—Dave Eggers
“Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It’s a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it’s a novel about families—the ones we’re born into and the ones we make for ourselves.”—USA Today
“The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air.”—Esquire
“Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCann’s marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down.”—The Seattle Times
“Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCann’s heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow.”—Entertainment Weekly
“An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall.”—O: The Oprah Magazine - 138.
PS: I Hate YouSummary: In this splendidly bittersweet romantic comedy, enemies forced together by a mutual loss are led on a cross-country journey toward a second chance.
Maddie Sanderson would be proud to honor her older brother’s dying wish, that she scatters his ashes over eight destinations that the adventurous 29-year-old never got to visit before he died from cancer. But in his will, Josh assigned her an impossible partner to help complete the mission—Dominic Perry. Seriously, if Maddie weren’t already at her brother's funeral, she would have killed him for this.
Sure, Dom was Josh’s life-long best friend. He’s also the infuriating man who broke Maddie’s heart back when she was naïve enough to give it to him. But since Dom insists on following the rules and Josh didn’t leave much room for Maddie to argue the matter, they embark together on a series of farewell trips that span thousands of miles, exploring new places and revisiting their complicated history along the way.
After a snowstorm leads to a shared bed, Maddie starts to wonder if her brother might be matchmaking from the grave. But when grief also reopens old wounds between them, Maddie will need more than Josh’s ghostly guidance to trust Dom again. - 139.
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus: A Read with Jenna Pick: A NovelSummary: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY
“Undeniably delicious.” —The New York Times
“A spellbinding debut about friendship, motherhood, first love, and the choices that bind us. . . I couldn't put it down!” —Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Summer Will Be Different
A witty, atmospheric, and brilliantly told novel that offers compelling portraits of womanhood, motherhood and female friendship, along with the irresistible intrigue surrounding an extraordinary British family
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents’ secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .
As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward. - 140.
Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and LiteratureSummary:Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation's inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity.
