The Library Guild Book Club will meet in the library workroom at noon on Thursday, March 25 to discuss The Blind Side by Michael Lewis. Please bring your lunch and a drink. Dessert will be provided. A copy of the book is available from Dr. Mandyck for $9.10 (cash or check made to Athens Academy).

More about this month's selection from the publisher:
One day Michael Oher will be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family's love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

Review scale, from highest to lowest rating:
A Must Read
Highly Recommended
Recommended
A Pretty Good Read
Nothing Special

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb JUV FIC LIEB

Josh Lieb is an executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and has also worked on "The Simpsons," and so it's no surprise that the humor in this book for young readers is a bit edgy. The protagonist Oliver Watson is a chubby, unpopular seventh grader--or so his classmates think. In "reality" (reality is a bit slippery here), he is an evil genius and criminal mastermind who commands an invisible army of all-powerful minions and uses Lionel Sheldrake, Third Richest Man in the World, whenever he needs a grownup to act as his public face. The plot is ostensibly about the election of the seventh grade class president. The real story, though, is Oliver's desire for more attention from his father and his crush on Tatiana Lopez, Meanest Girl in the School. Oliver is never a very likable character, but the world of his imagination is funny and fascinating, and an enjoyable place to spend some time. Lieb has sold the movie rights to Warner Brothers, so maybe this evil genius will be coming to a theater near you.

Sample lines: I head for the center locker and give its lock a few quick twists. The locker swings open, as do both of the lockers next to it--they're really just one big door. I slip inside and pull it shut behind me. I'm greeted by an elderly English butler. "Good afternoon, sir."

Recommended for: 5th - 9th grades, adults with a tolerance for fart and booger jokes.

Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.

My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath JUV FIC HORVATH

The first chapter of this wonderful book is a bit misleading, beginning as it does with a slow, lyrical description of summers past. The writing is beautiful in that first chapter, but as I say, slow, and I wasn't so sure that I wanted to read a whole book about "long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides," zzzzz...... But things pick up dramatically in the second chapter and gallop through to the end, and include not quite one hundred adventures, but plenty to sustain your attention, touch your heart and make you laugh out loud. The main character is Jane, the eldest of four children who live with their mother in a house by the sea, and the story really begins when Jane is drafted into delivering Bibles with the local church pastor whose name is Nellie Phipps and who has an unchurchly fascination with faith healing, fortune telling and traveling (or rather, failing to travel) by time portal. When Jane drops a Bible from a hot air balloon (I told you things picked up) onto the head of the youngest child of the awful Gourd family, she is further conscripted into babysitting all the little Gourds all summer, while her mother's gentlemen callers come and go, Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Nasters compete over who is the sickest, Jane's friend Ginny plots her future career as dress designer, and a dog named Horace is rescued from the sea. Horvath is the author of many other books (soon to be available in the Athens Academy library), so you can begin with this absolutely delightful book and look forward to more.

Sample lines: I am sorry to say that by noon, after countless trips to the public washroom with all five Gourds because I don't dare leave any of them on the beach, these little excursions being the height of excitement after long minutes of watching sand blow across the horizon and watching the Gourds who are getting restless slap each other with whatever is handy...it is then that I decide I will take the Gourds on a long trek. It will be like the Long March. History always seems to be full of downtrodden people being forced to march great distances for other people's convenience and if it works for those dictators it should work for me.

A Must Read for: 5th grade and up, and would make a terrific read-aloud for younger children or families.

Review by Dr. Maura Mandyck.

The Library Guild Book Club will meet in the library workroom at noon on Tuesday, Feb. 23 to discuss Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. Please bring your lunch and a drink. Dessert will be provided.

More about this month's selection from the publisher:

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is the story of James Sveck, a sophisticated, vulnerable young man with a deep appreciation for the world and no idea how to live in it. James is eighteen, the child of divorced parents living in Manhattan. Articulate, sensitive, and cynical, he rejects all of the assumptions that govern the adult world around him--including the expectation that he will go to college in the fall. The novel takes place over a few broiling days in the summer of 2003 as James confides in his sympathetic grandmother, stymies his canny therapist, deplores his pretentious sister, and devises a fake online identity in order to pursue his crush on a much older coworker. Nothing turns out how he'd expected.

Please join us from noon to 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8 in the Library Reading Room for our third annual Library Guild Christmas Book Club and Potluck Supper! We will be reading Lee Smith's The Christmas Letters (if you want a copy, please email Dr. Mandyck by the end of the day Friday, Nov. 13; the cost is $6.50 and payable by cash or check made out to Athens Academy).

Please bring a salad, any kind, to share and your own beverage. Dessert will be provided. And come even if you haven't read the book just to share some holiday spirit!

Our first book club meeting of the 2009-2010 school year will be on Thursday, Oct. 22 at noon in the library workroom. Please bring your lunch and a drink, and dessert will be provided. Our first selection is The Well and the Mine, by Gin Phillips. Copies will be available for purchase in the Media Center for $9.75 (cash or check made out to Athens Academy). Please let us know by Sept. 22 if you would like a copy ordered for you.

From Publishers Weekly
A tight-knit miner's family struggles against poverty and racism in Phillips's evocative first novel, set in Depression-era Alabama. Throughout, she moves skillfully between the points of view of miner father Albert, hard-working mother Leta, young daughter Tess and teenage daughter Virgie, and small son Jack. They see men who are frequently incapacitated or killed by accidents in the local mines; neighbors live off what they can grow on their patch of land; and blacks like Albert's fellow miner and friend Jonah are segregated in another part of Carbon Hill—and often hauled off to jail arbitrarily. When Tess witnesses a woman throwing a baby into their well, no one believes her until the dead child is found, and few are shocked. Tess, hounded by nightmares, and Virgie, on the cusp of womanhood and resistant to the thought of an early marriage to the local boys who court her, begin making inquiries of their own, visiting wives who've recently had babies and learning way more than they imagined. With a wisp of suspense, Phillips fully enters the lives of her honorable characters and brings them vibrantly to the page.