Book Club, Tue 9/4 6:30 pm, Visalia Library

 

Money isn't the same as treasure, and IQ isn't the same as smarts. An uplifting and joyous new novel hailed by Jacqueline Mitchard as 'solid gold.'

Perry L. Crandall knows what it's like to be an outsider. With an IQ of 76, he's an easy mark. Before his grandmother died, she armed Perry well with what he'd need to know: the importance of words and writing things down, and how to play the lottery. Most important, she taught him whom to trust-a crucial lesson for Perry when he wins the multimillion-dollar jackpot. As his family descends, moving in on his fortune, his fate, and his few true friends, he has a lesson for them: never, ever underestimate Perry Crandall.

 

Book Club, Tue 3/6 6:30 pm, Visalia Library

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family. Taken from: http://inthecountrywelove.com/

1st Tuesday Book Club, Tue 2/6 at 6:30 pm, Visalia Library

The First Tuesday Book Club will be reading "My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry" on Tue 2/6 at 6:30.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best and only friend. When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins.

“My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry” is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life, death, and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.

City of Bones Book & Movie, Sat 5/20 @2, Visalia Library

Teen Book Club

City of Bones - Book & Movie

Saturday, May 20 at 2 pm

Visalia Branch Library

 

Call 559-713-2731 to borrow a copy of City of Bones! Snacks will be served!

 

Mystery Readers Book Group

Mystery Readers Book Group

Sponsored by The Friends of the Library 

(559) 713-2709

 

For June: This month's theme is animals. Read any mystery featuring an animal!

Next Meeting
June 15 at 6:30pm

Come and bring a friend!!

Suggestions:

Lorna Barrett: Tricia Miles, running a mystery bookstore, and the cat Miss Marple, in fictional small-town Stoneham, New Hampshire, a town full of bookstores: Murder Is Binding (2008), Book Clubbed (2014), A Fatal Chapter (2015)

 

Laurien Berenson: Melanie Travis, a special education teacher who shows her standard poodles in dog shows, in Connecticut: A Pedigree To Die For (1995), Doggie Day Care Murder (2008), Death of a Dog Whisperer (2014)

 

Barbara Block: Robin Light, a pet store owner in Syracuse, New York:Chutes and Adders (1994), Salt City Blues (2005), No Good Deed (2007)

Todd Borg: Owen McKenna, an ex-San Francisco homicide inspector turned private investigator, and his Harlequin Great Dane, Spot, at Lake Tahoe, California, and Nevada: Tahoe Deathfall (2001), Tahoe Avalanche (2008), Tahoe Blue Fire (2015)

Blaize Clement: Dixie Hemingway, a former sheriff’s deputy, now a professional pet sitter, in Sarasota, Florida: Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (2005), Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues (2008), The Cat Sitter’s Whiskers (2015)

Susan Conant: Holly Winter, a dog trainer and magazine columnist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the Dog Lovers mysteries: A New Leash on Death (1989), Gaits of Heaven (2006), Sire and Damn (2015)

Sue Henry: Maxine “Maxie” McNab, a 60-something Alaskan widow, exploring the USA in her Winnebago with her faithful companion, miniature dachshund Stretch: The Serpents Trail (2004), The Refuge (2007), The End of the Road (2009)

Linda O. Johnston: Kendra Ballantyne, an attorney and freelance pet sitter in Los Angeles, California: Sit, Stay, Slay (2005), The Fright of the Iguana (2007), Feline Fatale (2010)

David Rosenfelt: Few can rival attorney Andy Carpenter's affection for golden retrievers, especially his own beloved Tara: Open and Shut (2002), Hounded (2014), Who Let the Dog Out? (2015)

Clea Simon: Pru Marlowe, an animal psychic returning to her hometown in the Berkshires, New York: Dogs Don’t Lie (2011), Kittens Can Kill (2015), When Bunnies Go Bad (2016)

Fran Stewart: Biscuit McKee, a librarian, and her cat, Marmalade, in Martinsville, a small town in northern Georgia: Orange as Marmalade (2004), Green as a Garden Hose (2005), Gray as Ashes (2014)

First Tuesday Book Club, May 5

For May, we'll be reading With a Book in Their Hands: Chicano/a Readers and Readerships across the Centuries edited by Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez.

Be sure to attend the panel discussion on April 11 when Martin-Rodriguez and other local authors from this book, including Lucia Vazquez will be visiting the Visalia Library for National Library Week. The panelists will highlight the important role of books and reading by reading from the book and telling stories from their lives.

Summary: 

Literary history is a history of reading. What happens during the act of reading is the subject of the branch of literary scholarship known as reader response theory. Does the text guide the reader? Does the reader operate independently of the text? Questions like these shape the approach of the essays in this book edited by a scholar known for his groundbreaking work in using reader response theory as a window into Chicana and Chicano literature.

Manuel M. Martín-Rodríguez has overseen several research projects aimed at documenting Chicana and Chicano reading practices and experiences. Here he gathers diverse and passionate accounts of reading drawn from that research. Books for many served as refuges from the sorrows of a childhood marked by violence or parental abandonment. And many of the contributors salute the roles of teachers in introducing poetry and stories into their lives.

We will be meeting in the Visalia Branch Blue Room to discuss this book on May 5 from 6:30pm - 7:45pm.

Mystery Readers Meeting, August 20

Mystery Readers Book Group 

Sponsored by The Friends of the Library 

(559) 713-2709

For August:Read a “hot” mystery (or any other form of hot, such as climate)

Hot Stuff   by Don Burns                               
Cake on a Hot Tin Roof   by Jacklyn Brady       

The Hot Country   by Robert Butler           
Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof    by Blaize Clemen
Roast Mortem   by Cleo Coyle                            
Hot Stuff   by Janet Evanovich

One Hot Mess   by Lois Greiman                             
Liar, Liar   by  K.T. Larson

Hot Rocks   by  Andy Rawls                       
Hot Mahogany  by  Stuart Woods

Next Meeting:  August 20th at 6:30pm

Meets every third Wed. of the Month
In the blue meeting room, upstairs 

First Tuesday Book Club Meeting, July 1

Our July pick for the First Tuesday Book Club is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is an autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author which details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief.

We will be meeting in the Visalia Branch Blue Room to discuss this book on July 1 from 6:30pm - 7:45pm.

First Tuesday Book Club Meeting, June 3

Lonesome Dove: a Novel
by Larry McMurtry

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize— winning classic, Lonesome Dove, the third book in the Lonesome Dove tetralogy, is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic, Lonesome Dove is a book to make us laugh, weep, dream, and remember.

*Description courtesy of the publisher.

May Mystery Readers' Meeting

The next Mystery Readers' meeting will be held on May 21 from 6:30 - 8:00pm in the Visalia Library's upstairs "blue" meeting room. This month, the choice is a fictional character who drinks. We aren't particular about what they drink.

Some author ideas:

Robert G. Barrett - Les Norton, a nightclub bouncer in Sydney, Australia
 
Laura Childs - Theodosia Browning, owner of the Indigo Teahouse in Charleston, South Carolina, in the Tea Shop Mysteries
 
Meg Chittenden - Charlie Plato, a country-western tavern owner, in San Francisco, California
 
Eoin Colfer - Daniel McEvoy, an Irish bouncer working in a seedy New Jersey bar
 
Ellen Crosby - Lucie Montgomery, operating her family's winery in Virginia, in the Wine Country mysteries
 
Charlie Huston - Henry Thompson, a former high school star baseball player, now a bartender with a drinking problem in Paul's Place, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City
 
Lee Jackson - Sarah Tanner, the proprietor of the Dining and Coffee Rooms and amateur sleuth, in 1850s London, England
 
Karen Kijewski - Kat Colorado, a bar-tending private investigator, in Sacramento, California
 
John Lescroart - Dismas Hardy, ex-cop bartender and ex-Assistant District Attorney turned defense attorney, and Abe Glitsky, a black, Jewish cop, in San Francisco, California
 
Ann Parker - Inez Stannert, a saloon owner, around 1880 in Leadville, Colorado, in the Silver Rush mysteries
 
Michele Scott - Nikki Sands, in the Napa Valley, California, in the Wine Lovers mysteries
 
Robert Skinner - Wesley Farrell, a Creole nightclub owner passing for white, in 1930s New Orleans, Louisiana
 
For more information, please call 713-2709.

First Tuesday Book Club Meeting, May 6

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie

In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
 *Book description courtesy of Hatchette Book Group.

Learn More About the ELF Book Club

Watch a short video about the Literacy Center's ELF book club, and call 733-6445 if you'd like more information on this, or any other, Literacy Center program!