book
DISCUSSIONS
The library has seven book discussion series that meet regularly. Patrons will enjoy lively discussion and connecting to community members at each session.
Books are available at the Adult and Teen Services Desk one month before the discussion, or any time through our catalog or eLibrary. Didn't finish the book? No problem, everyone is welcome to join in!
Real Reads
coffee, doughnuts, and true stories you can't put down
Frostbite
by Nicola Twilley
Tuesday, January 20
9:30 - 11 a.m.
An engaging and far-reaching exploration of refrigeration, tracing its evolution from scientific mystery to globe-spanning infrastructure, and an essential investigation into how it has remade our entire relationship with food-for better and for worse. Just a century ago, eating food that had been refrigerated was cause for both fear and excitement.
Is a River Alive?
by Robert Macfarlane
Tuesday, February 17
9:30 - 11 a.m.
Renowed nature writer, Robert Macfarlane, expolores the anceint idea that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. He travels to three rivers in Ecudor, India and Canada, braiding together stories of pollution, the people and animals who rely on these rivers and personal anicdotes. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.
Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
by John Green
Tuesday, March 17
9:30 - 11 a.m.
In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. ... In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.
- Goodreads
Pages and Pints
join us at Goldfinger Brewing Company to discuss fiction titles.
Ages 21+
The Man Who Lived Underground
by Richard Wright
Tuesday, February 3 or
Wednesday, February 4
7 - 8:30 p.m.
Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city's sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) at the height of his creative powers.
Ages 21+
Show Don't Tell
by Curtis Sittenfeld
Tuesday, March 3 or
Wednesday, March 4
7 - 8:30 p.m.
In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.
Ages 21+
Love Forms
by Claire Adam
Tuesday, March 31 or
Wednesday, April 1
7 - 8:30 p.m.
For much of her life, Dawn has felt as if something had been missing. Now, at the age of fifty-eight, with a divorce behind her and her two grown-up sons busy with their own lives, she should be trying to settle into a new future for herself. But she keeps returning to the past and to the secret she’s kept all these years. At just sixteen, Dawn found herself pregnant, and—as was common in Trinidad back then—her parents sent her away to have the baby and give her up for adoption.
More than forty years later, Dawn yearns to reconnect with her lost daughter. But tracking down her child is not as easy as she had thought. It’s an emotional journey that leads Dawn to retrace her steps back home and to question not only that fateful decision she’d made as a teenager but every turn in the road of her life since.
Ages 21+
Stellar Reads
explore new worlds and magic in sci-fi/fantasy reads
Childhood's End
by Arthur C. Clark
Wednesday, January 14
7 - 8 p.m.
The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city--intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began. But at what cost?
Harmattan Season
by Tochi Onyebuchi
Wednesday, February 11
7 - 8 p.m.
Raymond Chandler meets P. Djèlí Clark in a postcolonial West Africa. Veteran and private eye Boubacar doesn't need much-least of all trouble-but trouble always seems to find him. Work has dried up, and he'd rather be left alone to deal with his bills as the Harmattan rolls in to coat the city in dust. But when a bleeding woman stumbles into his doorway, only to vanish just as quickly, Bouba reluctantly finds himself enmeshed in the secrets of a city boiling on the brink of violence.
The Last Hour Between Worlds
by Melissa Caruso
Wednesday, March 11
7 - 8 p.m.
Kembral Thorne is spending a few hours away from her newborn, and she's determined to enjoy herself at this party no matter what. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She is a Hound, after all, and she can't help picking up the scent of trouble. She's not the only one. Her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is on the prowl. They quickly identify what's causing the mayhem: a mysterious grandfather clock that sends them down an Echo every time it chimes. In each strange new layer of reality, time resets and a sinister figure appears to perform a blood-soaked ritual. As Kem and Rika fall into increasingly macabre versions of their city, they'll need to rely on their wits-and each other-to unravel the secret of the clock and save their home.
Celebrity Reads
read books written by or about celebrities and discuss their lives and impact
We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story
by Simu Liu
Tuesday, February 10
1 - 2 p.m.
Marvel's newest recruit shares his own inspiring and unexpected origin story, from China to the bright lights of Hollywood. An immigrant who battles everything from parental expectations to cultural stereotypes, Simu Liu struggles to forge a path for himself, rising from the ashes of a failed accounting career (yes, you read that right) to become Shang-Chi. We Were Dreamers is more than a celebrity memoir - it's a story about growing up between cultures, finding your family, and becoming the master of your own extraordinary circumstance.
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
by Margaret Atwood
Tuesday, April 14
1 - 2 p.m.
How does one of the greatest storytellers of our time write her own life? The long-awaited memoir from one of our most lauded and influential cultural figures. Atwood unfolds the story of her life, linking seminal moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel year that spawned Cat’s Eye to the Orwellian 1980s Berlin where she wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages bursting with bohemian gatherings, her magical life with the wildly charismatic writer Graeme Gibson and major political turning points, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood actors and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.
Armchair Detectives
true crime stories that will keep you looking over your shoulder
The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a 20 Year Fight for Justice
by Dan Slepian
Thursday, January 15
7 - 8 p.m.
In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC's Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit. Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched Slepian on a two-decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying--or even acknowledging--its mistakes and their consequences.
A Mother's Reckoning
by Sue Klebold
Thursday, February 19
7 - 8 p.m.
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.
For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?
These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.
Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases
by Paul Holes
Thursday, March 19
7 - 8 p.m.
From the detective who found The Golden State Killer, a memoir of investigating America’s toughest cold cases and the rewards--and toll--of a life solving crime.
Walk & Talk Book Club
take a walk around Barth Pond in this book discussion in partnership with the Downers Grove Park District
The Walk & Talk Book Club is on hiatus for the cold season. It will return in Spring, 2026!
Next Chapter Book Club
literacy program for adults (ages 18+) with intellectual and developmental disabilities
About the Next Chapter Book Club
- Get together to enjoy books, make friends, and have fun
- Books will be read together during the meeting
- All are welcome, regardless of the ability to read
- Books will be provided to all participants
- Meet twice a month online, via Zoom
Meetings are held on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at 6:30 p.m.