Life's Work: Memoirs & Reflections on Vocation Thursdays,7-8:30 pm Lebanon Public Library. All discussion groups will take place on the 2nd Thursday of each month in the All Purpose Room of the library.
*All books from this series can be obtained at the Lebanon Public Library.
If you have questions or suggestions for programs, please call Carolyn Crocker at 448-2459. Also, if you need special accommodations, please call the library 72 hours in advance.
June 12
Swimming to Antarctica: tales of a long-distance swimmer by Lynne Cox
The fascinating story of physical challenges met and one swimmer's determination to "bring countries and peoples together."
July 10
A Primate's Memoir: a neuroscientist's unconventional life among the baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky
Humor, adventure, science, keen observation and a passionate love of Africa and its primates make this memoir absorbing reading.
August 14
Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with autism by Temple Grandin
An autistic woman who has made a career in livestock engineering, Grandin has unique insights into both human and animal behavior.
**The Seventh Well** by Fred Wander; translated by Michael Hoffman
The second chapter of The Seventh Wall is titled "What keeps a man alive" and this reader could not help but marvel at the tenacity with which the narrator clings to life; facing the unthinkable, enduring the unbearable, surviving the unrelenting evil surrounding him. Marching through winter snows, working dawn to dusk in the concentration camps, he gained strength from his fellow prisoners, men from almost every country in Europe brought together by the madness of the Nazis, who share the stories of their lives.
The novel is based on the life of the author, who survived some twenty concentration camps, death marches, and slave labor. Yet to quote the translator: "The camps don't even come over as the very worst thing Wander was put through: his own portion of suffering always seems tolerable to him; what happens to others is always worse..." Another voice from the Holocaust that deserves to be read, absorbed, celebrated.
Try Dying by James Scott Bell
First in a new series featuring LA lawyer Ty Buchanan. Bizarre accident throws Buchanan's life into chaos. Forced to take matters in his own hands, through daring and brilliance - and some luck - he clears himself, rids the LA scene of a major charlatan, and in the process clears the way in his own life to rid himself of many false values and ambitions. By story's end, living sparsely in a trailer on the edge of a religious retreat house, there's no doubting that after a brief respite he'll be primed for further adventures.
A Walk With Jane Austen by Lori Smith
A biographical travelogue, visiting the scenes of key events in classic author Jane Austen's life and novels, but also, told movingly as a first-person account, Lori Smith's own soul-searching journey of discovery and change.
The Match: The Day The Game of Golf Changed Forever by Mark Frost
Intriguing gentlemanly sports action, but it's the evoking of an era when the golf world, and American social life, stood unknowingly on the brink of change - the 1950s - the incisive yet respectful depiction of a variety of competitive personalities (legendary golfers, businessmen, bettors, show business types) and the somewhat festive and free-spirited setting and dramatic ocean-side scenery - at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am on the Monterrey Peninsula - that give this book appeal to the imagination.
An Irish Country Doctor and An Irish Country Village by Patrick Taylor
Two related novels by Irish/Canadian doctor Patrick Taylor, set in County Down, Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Beginning as a popular monthly column in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour, these liltingly pleasant novels feature somewhat crusty and aging village physician Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, who has a sort of renegade fondness for the music of a then little-known but promising rock band named The Rolling Stones, and his young not-yet fully self-assured assistant physician, Barry Laverty. In an afterword, the author laments that such an Ireland no longer exists, but he uses his memories of a simpler and more bucolic time and place to lay bare what's basic in fundamental human life, bringing his honest if sometimes bumbling characters a sense of community, accomplishment, faithfulness to their own intrinsic individuality, and by-and-large a sense of unassuming but enduring meaningfulness. Low-key storytelling, mixing humor with the kind of quiet drama that's ever present in most human lives.
Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs by Barbara Mertz (a.k.a., Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels)
For those intrigued with ancient civilizations and archaeological expeditions, the creator of the Amelia Peabody series of mysteries (written under the Elizabeth Peters pen name), Barbara Mertz here steps forward in her original role as lively and inquisitive scholar, delivering a flowing, detail-laced, well-told and enthralling account of those ever-fascinating and wonder-provoking Egyptians. An extensively revised and updated edition of an acclaimed 1964 work.
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
Long considered one of America's best short story writers, here in one volume are some of Wolff's most revered and engaging stories, as well as a host of equally intriguing more recent tales. Wolff is that rare short story writer who can draw a reader in with the first paragraph and in just a dozen pages convey the sense that one is entering a fully developed world where something momentous, however subtle, is this moment coming to pass. These stories have a fullness usually found only in novels.
(DVD) The Best of Friends
Not the American TV series, but a recent DVD reissue of a British TV film starring John Gielgud, Patrick McGoohan, and Wendy Hiller, as respectively, museum director Sydney Cockerell, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, and Dame Laurentia McLachlan (a Benedictine nun), three disparate personalities who improbably formed a lasting and highly literate friendship. Adapted from journals, letters and other writings, with a core of essential honesty running throughout, lively and insightful conversation flows forth, about their personal lives and about topics ranging across the spectrum of human existence.
(DVD) Chalk
"Mockumentary" - fictional documentary titled a bit towards humor - examining, through the course of one complete school year, the lives of several high school teachers, which tend to become more frayed as the year proceeds. Written and directed by former teachers, with some secondary roles played by currently-employed teachers, a serious and sympathetic story is being told here, despite the not infrequent and often subtly satiric gags. So real-seeming - and revealing - that it can't help but be engrossing. Might scare some away from joining the teaching profession, were it not told with so deft and savingly light a spirit. Some interesting special features, too.
(DVD) Courtship; On Valentine's Day; 1918
Three Teleplays by esteemed screenwriter Horton Foote ("To Kill a Mockingbird"; "Tender Mercies"), reflectively told and with the delicate pacing of proper small-town early 20th century southern America - automobiles were still something of a novelty - displaying the panorama of univeral longings, heartaches, repressions, thick-headedness, anxiety, hope and even, at times, the spontaneous up-springing of joy and mirth. Compelling personality studies, featuring the kind of dialogue where every word...even every pause...counts. An underlying but persistent drive not to let others decide their fate, gradually played out in the central characters' lives, brings each story to close on a note of quiet determination and inner strength.
(DVD) Feasting on Asphalt
Mixing wry humor with an adventurous quest for grass-roots gustatory delight, filmaker-turned-Food Network personality/chef Alton Brown (graduate of Vermont's New England Culinary Institute) delivers a pleasant 3-disc diversion as he travels cross-country with a small TV crew, bouncing along scenic roadways (even to the frosty heights of Pike's Peak) on their trusty if sometimes wobbly motorcycles.
(DVD) A Wayfarer's Journey: Listening to Mahler
Highly ambitious PBS video documentary on the life and music of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), featuring actor Richard Dreyfuss (Mr. Holland's Opus) as the dramatic "voice" of Mahler, reciting from letters and journals, and most impressively, excerpts of an extended interview with German conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who, from a convincingly first-hand perspective, provides penetrating insight into the kind of absolute focus, often chilling solitude, and, on occasion, stunning inspiration that goes into the creation and/or presentation of musical works which, like Mahler's, offer glimpses of, almost bring a listener to the edge of, universal truths. Naturally, the strong, melodic, and sustaining music of Mahler plays throughout much of the 90 minutes, either prominently in the background or, at intervals, rising to the forefront in clips of featured concert performances. It is rare to see, in video form, so depth-probing and analytic an inquiry into the complexities and accomplishments of a restlessly creative and searching spirit, making this a documentary that not only bears, but clearly invites, multiple viewings. Chances are you'll come away feeling your time has been significantly well-spent.