Dusting Off the Classics

Tuesday, July 1, 2025
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Auditorium or online via Zoom

Been meaning to read more of the classics? Want to revisit books you haven’t read since you were in school? What is a “classic” anyway? Join us to read and discuss a different classic book each month. This event is hosted with a hybrid model– come to the library Auditorium if you prefer in person events, but we’ll email you a link to join the discussion on Zoom. Print copies of the books are available at the Upper Customer Service desk.

This month: 

Stoner by John Williams

“It’s simply a novel about a guy who goes to college and becomes a teacher. But it’s one of the most fascinating things that you’ve ever come across.” – Tom Hanks, actor and director

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

Read Between the Spines Book Group

Tuesday, July 22, 2025
5:30 – 6:45 PM
Galena Digital Branch
6954 Hwy 150

Read great books and make new friends at this new book discussion at the Galena Digital Branch. Print copies of the book will be available at the Galena Digital Branch.

This month: 

My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart

Camilla Haven is on holiday alone, and wishes for some excitement. She had been sitting quietly in a crowded Athens cafe writing to her friend Elizabeth in England, “Nothing ever happens to me…”

Then, without warning, a stranger approached, thrust a set of car keys at her and pointed to a huge black touring car parked at the curb. “The car for Delphi, mademoiselle… A matter of life and death,” he whispered and disappeared.

From that moment Camilla’s life suddenly begins to take off when she sets out on a mysterious car journey to Delphi in the company of a charming but quietly determined Englishman named Simon Lester. Simon told Camilla he had come to the ancient Greek ruins to “appease the shade” of his brother Michael, killed some fourteen years earlier on Parnassus. From a curious letter Michael had written, Simon believed his brother had stumbled upon something of great importance hidden in the craggy reaches of the mountainside. And then Simon and Camilla learned that they were not alone in their search…

The ride was Camilla’s first mistake… or perhaps she had unintentionally invoked the gods. She finds herself in the midst of an exciting, intriguing, yet dangerous adventure. An extraordinary train of events turned on a nightmare of intrigue and terror beyond her wildest daydreams.

#BookTalk

Thursday, July 3, 2025
6:00 – 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library
Applegate Room

Do you love reading and talking about books? Join us to discuss a recently popular title each month! We meet in person at the Central Branch of the Floyd County Library (180 W. Spring Street.) You can pick up a print copy of the book at the Upper Customer Service Desk, or download an eBook from the Indiana Digital Library. Don’t miss this opportunity to share your thoughts and insights with other readers.

This month: 

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby