10/29/2024*: A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
\n
Paris\, 1885: Aubry Tourvel\, a spoiled and stubborn nine-y ear-old girl\, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from sch ool. She tosses it over the fence\, only to find it in her backpack that e vening. Days later\, at the family dinner table\, she starts to bleed to d eath.
\nWhen medical treatment only makes her worse\, she flees to t he outskirts of the city\, where she realizes that it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive. So begins her lifelong journey on the run f rom her condition\, which won't allow her to stay anywhere for longer than a few days--nor return to a place where she's already been.
\nFrom the scorched dunes of the Calashino Sand Sea to the snow-packed peaks of t he Himalayas\; from a bottomless well in a Parisian courtyard\, to the she lves of an infinite underground library\, we follow Aubry as she learns wh at it takes to survive and ultimately\, to truly live. But the longer Aubr y wanders and the more desperate she is to share her life with others\, th e clearer it becomes that the world she travels through may not be quite t he same as everyone else's...
\n11/26/2024: Educated: A Memoir by T ara Westover
\n
"Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classro om. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho\, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother\, a midwife and healer\, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junk yard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education\, and no one to interven e when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.
\nAs a way out\, Tara began to educate herself\, learning enough mathematics and grammar t o be admitted to Brigham Young University. Her quest for knowledge would t ransform her\, taking her over oceans and across continents\, to Harvard a nd to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far\, if there was still a way home.
\nWith the acute insight that distingui shes all great writers\, Tara Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-a ge story that gets to the heart of what an education offers: the perspecti ve to see one's life through new eyes\, and the will to change it."--Provi ded by publisher.
\n12/17/2024*: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
\n
During the languid days of the Christmas break\, a gro up of thirty-something friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together\, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. For this vac ation\, they've chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish High lands--the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves.
\nThe trip began innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery \, champagne in front of a crackling fire\, and reminiscences about the pa st. But after a decade\, the weight of secret resentments has grown too he avy for the group's tenuous nostalgia to bear. Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year's Eve\, the cord holding them together snaps.
\nNow\, o n New Year's Day\, one of them is dead . . . and another of them did it.\n
-------------------------
\nRegistration is required for this event\, and must be completed two hours prior to the start time. A librar y card and PIN is required for registration. If you do not have a card\, c lick HERE to obtain one.
\nAccommodations for persons with di sabilities are available upon request. Please ask for Learning Servi ces at 255-2665 or email JPLprograms@coj.net. \;
\n* Due to scheduling conflicts\, these dates are NOT the fourth Tuesday of th e month as typically scheduled.
\nhttps://jaxpubliclibrary.libnet.info/ event/11604845 URL;VALUE=URI:https://jaxpubliclibrary.libnet.info/event/11604845 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR