Upcoming Book Discussions

New members are welcome to join any book group without registering. For assistance or to get a copy of a book, please visit the Customer Service Desk or call (812) 949-3523.

#BookTalk

Wednesday, March 27, 2024
6:00 – 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Applegate Room

Do you love reading and talking about books? Join us to socialize and 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:

Circe by Madeline Miller

Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals.

Dusting Off the Classics

Tuesday, April 2, 2024
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 with leader Christopher Proctor, IU Southeast Librarian. 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:

The Bhagavad Gita

This early epic poem recounts the conversation between the warrior and his charioteer, the divine manifestation. It sets out the important lessons to learn to change the outcome of the war in the moments before a great battle that the warrior fights, and culminates in revealing the true cosmic warrior and counselling him to search for the universal perfection of life. This most important work ranges from yoga postures to dense moral discussion and serves as a practical guide to living well.

Monday Mystery Book Club

Monday, March 18, 2024
6:00 – 7:00 PM
New Albany Central Library Applegate Meeting Room

Do you love a good mystery? Join us for a lively discussion of a different mystery book each month. Print copies of the books are available at the Upper Customer Service desk.

This month:

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart

When farmers cutting turf in an Irish peat bog make a grisly discovery—the perfectly preserved head of a young woman with long red hair—Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and American pathologist Nora Gavin must use cutting-edge techniques to preserve ancient evidence. Because the bog’s watery, acidic environment prevents decay, it’s difficult to tell how long the red-haired girl has been buried—two years, two centuries, or even much longer.

Who is she? The extraordinary find leads to even more disturbing puzzles. The red-haired girl is not the only enigma in this remote corner of Galway. Two years earlier, Mina Osborne, the wife of a local landowner, went for a walk with her young son and vanished without a trace. Could they, too, be hidden in the bog’s treacherous depths, only to be discovered centuries from now? Or did Hugh Osborne murder his family, as some villagers suspect? Bracklyn House, Osborne’s stately home, holds many secrets, and Nora and Cormac’s inquiries threaten to expose them all.

A More Perfect Union

Monday, April 8, 2024
6:00-7:30 PM
New Albany Central Library Auditorium

In this book club for adults, we dive into different civic topics as we strive to be part of a “more perfect union”. Topics will vary, but we aim for a neighborly discussion as we unpack some of the issues facing us as a society today. Print copies of the book are available at the Upper Customer Service Desk. This book group offers a free copy of the book to keep, while supplies last.

This month:

Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison

In Anti-Diet, Christy Harrison takes on diet culture and the multi-billion-dollar industries that profit from it, exposing all the ways it robs people of their time, money, health, and happiness. It will turn what you think you know about health and wellness upside down, as Harrison explores the history of diet culture, how it’s infiltrated the health and wellness world, how to recognize it in all its sneaky forms, and how letting go of efforts to lose weight or eat “perfectly” actually helps to improve people’s health—no matter their size. Drawing on scientific research, personal experience, and stories from patients and colleagues, Anti-Diet provides a radical alternative to diet culture, and helps readers reclaim their bodies, minds, and lives so they can focus on the things that truly matter.

Read Between the Spines Book Group

Tuesday, March 26, 2024
5:30 – 6:30 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:

American Demon by Daniel Stashower

On September 5th, 1934, a young beachcomber made a gruesome discovery on the shores of Cleveland’s Lake Erie: the lower half of a female torso, neatly severed at the waist. The victim, dubbed “The Lady of the Lake,” was only the first of a butcher’s dozen. Over the next four years, twelve more bodies would be scattered across the city. The bodies were dismembered with surgical precision and drained of blood. Some were beheaded while still alive.

Terror gripped the city. Amid the growing uproar, Cleveland’s besieged mayor turned to his newly-appointed director of public safety: Eliot Ness. Ness had come to Cleveland fresh from his headline-grabbing exploits in Chicago, where he and his band of “Untouchables” led the frontline assault on Al Capone’s bootlegging empire. Now he would confront a case that would redefine his storied career.

Reading the Rainbow

Wednesday, March 20, 2024
IU Southeast Library or online via Zoom
4201 Grant Line Rd. 

Join us to discuss an LGBTQ+ themed book each month with leader Christopher Proctor, IU Southeast Librarian. This discussion is open to all adults; members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies are welcome. Print copies of the books are available at the Floyd County Library Upper Customer Service Desk and at the IU Southeast Library. If you’d like to attend online via Zoom, register at the link below to receive the Zoom link.

This month:

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram

Darius Kellner speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows more about Hobbit social cues than Persian ones. He’s a Fractional Persian—half, his mom’s side—and his first-ever trip to Iran is about to change his life. Darius has never really fit in at home, and he’s sure things are going to be the same in Iran. His clinical depression doesn’t exactly help matters, and trying to explain his medication to his grandparents only makes things harder. Then Darius meets Sohrab, the boy next door, and everything changes. Soon, they’re spending their days together, playing soccer, eating faludeh, and talking for hours on a secret rooftop overlooking the city’s skyline. Sohrab calls him Darioush—the original Persian version of his name—and Darius has never felt more like himself than he does now that he’s Darioush to Sohrab.

Strange & Unusual Book Discussion

Tuesday, March 19, 2024
6:30 – 7:30 PM
New Albany Central Library
Indiana Room

Are you a horror nerd who wishes it was Halloween all year-long? Join us at the Central Library for a “Strange and Unusual Book Discussion,” the third Tuesday of each month at 6:30pm in the Indiana Room.

This month:

Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

When Vera Donovan, one of the wealthiest and most ill-natured residents of Maine’s Little Tall Island, dies suddenly in her home, suspicion is immediately cast on her housekeeper and caretaker, Dolores Claiborne. Dolores herself is no stranger to such mistrust, thanks to the local chatter and mysterious circumstances surrounding her abusive husband’s death twenty-nine years earlier during a TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE!

But if this is truly to be the day of Dolores Claiborne’s reckoning, she has a few things of her own that she’d like to get off her chest…and begins to confess a spirited, intimate, and harrowing tale of the darkest secrets hidden within her hardscrabble existence, revealing above all one woman’s unwavering determination to weather the storm of her life with grace and protect the one she loves, no matter what the cost…