Book Club
Book Clubs are held monthly at both Blenheim and Picton Libraries.
Book Club is a group of keen readers who meet to discuss books on a theme, although you can talk about any book that you have been reading and enjoyed. Bring whatever you have been reading and give a brief outline of the book and what you thought of it (without giving away any spoilers or the ending!).
Marlborough District Library (Blenheim) Book Club
Marlborough Libraries Book Club meets on the last Thursday of the month, 6:30pm at Te Kahu o Waipuna. Book Club meets after hours so if you are wanting to attend, please come to the Wynen Street side door.
The next Blenheim Book Club meeting will be Thursday 26 September at 6.30 pm where the theme will be: Arts and Craft
Picton Library and Service Centre Waitohi Whare Mātauranga
The next Picton Book Club meeting will be Thursday 3 October at 6.30 pm.
All welcome, just drop by and join us.
Below are some of the books discussed at this month's Blenheim Book Club where the theme was: Japan
Book Club Reviews
The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase
Adult Fiction
One dog changes the life of everyone who takes him in on his journey to reunite with his first owner in this inspiring tribute to the bond between humans and dogs and the life-affirming power of connection. Following a devastating earthquake and tsunami, a young man in Japan finds a stray dog outside a convenience store. The dog's tag says "Tamon," a name evocative of the guardian deity of the north. The man decides to keep Tamon, becoming the first in a series of owners as the dog journeys south to find the boy whom disaster tore him from. Over the course of five years, Tamon will be taken into six vastly different homes, the final one belonging to his beloved first owner, Hikaru, a boy who has not spoken since the trauma of the tsunami. An agent of fate, Tamon is a gift to everyone who welcomes him into their life.
See if The Boy and the Dog is available on our catalogue or place a hold
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
Adult fiction
When documentary maker Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job producing a Japanese television show that just happens to be sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, she uncovers some unsavoury truths about love, fertility, and a dangerous hormone called DES. Soon she will also cross paths with Akiko Ueno, a beleaguered Japanese housewife struggling to escape her overbearing husband. And the battle with 'big beef' will be on in earnest.
See if My Year of Meat is available on our catalogue or place a hold
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
Adult fiction
Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Twenty five year old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier. When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop. As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.
See if Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is available on our catalogue or place a hold
Grand by Noelle McCarthy
Adult fiction
An astonishing memoir about mothers and daughters, addiction and recovery, birth and loss, running away and coming home Quick-witted, charismatic and generous; angry, vicious and hurt; in pubs all over Cork City, Noelle McCarthy's mother Carol rages against her life and everything she has lost. Soon after leaving college, in the early years of the millennium, Noelle flees. Even on the other side of the world, with fame and success within her grasp, Noelle cannot escape an appetite for self-destruction. Life spirals out of control until she too is in danger of losing everything. At thirty, she pulls back from the brink. Over a decade later, Carol is dying. Finally, it seems, mother and daughter will make peace. Except Carol has no interest in admitting her own mortality - she will die as she lived, entirely on her own terms. If there is any reckoning to be done between past and present, Noelle will be doing it on her own. Grand is the deeply moving and surprisingly funny outcome of Noelle's yearning to understand her mother, and to make sense of their lives, together and apart. Most of all, it is a dazzlingly honest memoir about becoming a modern woman.
See if Grand is available on our catalogue or place a hold
Tiananmen Square by Lai Wen
Adult fiction
It is Beijing in the 1970s, and Lai lives with her parents, grandmother and younger brother in a small flat in a working-class area. Her grandmother is a formidable figure no-nonsense and uncompromising but loving towards her granddaughter while her ageing beauty of a mother snipes at her father, a sunken figure who has taken refuge in his work. As she grows up, Lai comes to discern the realities of the country she lives in: an early encounter with the police haunts her for years; her father makes her see that his quietness is a reaction to experiences he has lived through; and an old bookseller subtly introduces her to ideas and novels that open her mind to different perspectives. But she also goes through what anyone goes through when young, the ebbs and flows of friendships; troubles and rewards at home and at school; and the first steps and missteps in love. A gifted student, she is eventually given a scholarship to study at the prestigious Peking University; while there she meets new friends and starts to get involved in the student protests that have been gathering speed. It is the late 1980s, and change is in the air...
See if Tiananmen Square is available on our catalogue or place a hold