Tuesday, April 14: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
Tuesday, May 12: All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley
Anna DiMartino
Tuesdays, 4–5:30 PM
April 14, May 12
Joan & Irwin Jacobs Music Room
$10/15 for each session
Are you an avid reader, or would you simply like to read more? Would you like to read more thoughtfully? Are you intellectually curious and longing to be with a group of like-minded folks?
Join us for lively and thought-provoking discussion on award-winning (or nominated) literature, primarily fiction.
Wine and snacks provided.
Tuesday, April 14: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
New York Times Bestseller • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, O: The Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek
“Kingsolver brilliantly captures both the price of profound change and how it can pave the way not only for future generations, but also for a radiant, unexpected expansion of the heart.” —O: The Oprah Magazine
The acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees, and recipient of numerous literary awards—including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters—returns with a story about two families, in two centuries, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.
How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family’s one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.
In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town’s powerful men.
A timely and "utterly captivating" novel (San Francisco Chronicle), Unsheltered interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.
Tuesday, May 12: All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
New York Times bestseller
Named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the Financial Times, the New York Post, Book Riot, and The Sunday Times (London).
An “exquisite” (The Washington Post) “hauntingly beautiful” (Associated Press) portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.
Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamourous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought that he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.
To his surprise and your delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.
In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All the Beauty in the World is an “empathic” (The New York Times Book Review), “moving” (NPR), “consoling, and beautiful” (The Guardian) portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
Immediately after you register, look for a confirmation email and receipt. In the week preceding the class start date, you will receive another email with more details.