Mystery Book Club

This Monday, October 11, the Mystery Book Club will be discussing The Godwulf Manuscript and Robert B. Parker's work in general. Feel welcome to attend if you've read The Godwulf Manuscript or if you're a fan of Parker, Spenser, or mysteries in general.

Parker is often mentioned as the heir or even the equal to great detective novelists like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald. Does he live up to the hype?* Join us Monday to find out or add your voice to the discussion! For more information about Parker's Spenser novels, check out this site: http://www.thrillingdetective.com/spenser.html.

We meet at 6:00. Hope to see you there!

-Alan

*My opinion: yes, kind of.

Book Clubbers Welcome

Book clubs are wonderful. It is absolutely amazing to discuss a book with another person and get a totally different insight of the author's message. Of course, it is also comforting to find someone shares your excitement or who appreciates a certain passage beckoning you to take a trip down memory lane. How satisfying to recognize in someone else the anger the author made you experience! It is even redeeming to learn someone else thought a particular title was a total waste of time!

Another great benefit of being in a book club is discovering other books to read. Members are always sharing their latest find and advising one another if a certain title should be read before another one by the same author.

If you've never been part of a book club, you really should give it a try. In most cases, each member reads (or listens to) the same book and the facilitator prepares questions for discussion. I've yet to attend a meeting where we didn't get off-track from the book, but that's part of the fun too.

Socastee Library has several book clubs from which to choose. Each one is hosted by a library staff member. The most popular one is the one devoted to mysteries. Mysterious Mondays meets the second Monday each month at 6:00 in the evening. Last year, each monthly reading selection was set in a different country - and not a single one was written by James Patterson!

If the Book Fits Book Club is Socastee Library's eclectic reading group. Each month's selection is chosen completely without being limited to a certain genre and over the years a wide variety of books have been shared - from Pat Conroy's cookbook to the historical novel The Red Tent. The meetings are held the fourth Thursday at 6:00 p.m.

There is one Socastee book club which meets in the afternoon. It is devoted to southern fiction, but not limited to southerners. Recent reads have included The Prince of Tides, Ya-Yas in Bloom, and Sweetwater Creek. The meetings are held the third Wednesday each month at 1:30.

For each of these book clubs, the library staff stockpiles all the county library system's copies of the titles which are then made available for book club members to check out. At times we also borrowed books from Chapin Memorial Library as well as libraries around the country to provide enough copies for all interested persons.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention.......book clubs always have food! Refreshments and coffee just go hand-in-hand with a good read. Like the commercial said - "Try it, you'll like it!"

The FroggyOne @ Socastee

Holiday Book Clubs

Before the holidays kick into high gear, take a little time off to enjoy one of our fun and relaxing Holiday Book Clubs.

Monday, December 14, at 6:00PM, we will be discussing The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog by Dave Barry. The book is a nostalgic, insouciant crowd-pleaser describing a Christmas pageant gone awry in 1960.

Wednesday, December 16, at 1:30PM, we will be discussing The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore, which Publisher's Weekly says " is enough to make even the most cynical Scrooge guffaw."

Check at the Circulation Desk for copies of either book, and check our online calendar for more events!

-Alan

Tuesday Evening Book Club

The Tuesday Evening Book Club met on October 20th to discuss Anne Tyler’s “Digging to America.” The book is about two families, as different as day and night, who meet at an airport while there to pick up their adopted Korean baby daughters. A relationship develops between the families, and soon they are seeing one another almost on a daily basis. Through their interactions, Tyler is able to focus on the cultural differences between the two families. She exposes problems, misunderstandings, and the difficulties people often have while trying to acclimate to a new lifestyle in a another country, or a different environment.
The book raised a good many questions at our book club meeting. Sharing our individual interpretations of the author’s view and characterization allows us to bring our own life experiences to the table. Some of us like the books we read more than other members do, but one thing we all agree on, is that we get so much more from a book we’ve read if we can share what we’ve read with others.
If you are looking for a group to discuss the books you read and for new reading suggestions, the Tuesday Evening Book Club may be the answer. We meet on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. Please call the library (215-4700) for more information. - Linda

Mystery Book Club Musings

Hi everyone!

On October 12th, the Socastee Library Mysterious Mondays Book Club had another lively and very entertaining book discussion of Karin Fossum's "Don't Look Back." Featuring a very earnest and empathetic character, Inspector Sejer, Fossum skillfully blends psychological suspense, well- crafted subplots, red herrings, and a complex study of fragile characters within her police procedurals.

Dubbed the "Norwegian queen of crime fiction" Fossum is one author to check out especially if you have enjoyed books by Greg Iles or the Kurt Wallander detective series by Henning Mankell. Not for the faint of heart cozy mystery reader, the Inspector Sejer series is gripping, complex, harrowing, and suspenseful. Most of the book club members described the books as hard to put down, dark, but engrossing. The library system carries all six books within the Inspector Sejer series.

If whodunits are your thing, stop by the Socastee Library the second Monday of the month at 6pm from January-November and join the Mysterious Mondays Book Club. For November '09 we will be discussing John Burdett's "Bangkok 8." You can call or stop by the Socastee Library to request a copy of this book. I hope to see you there! -Kim