2nd Friday Book Club 2009
The fourth anniversary of the 2nd Friday Book Club was celebrated in October at Books on Main. Congratulations to all 2nd Friday Readers!
WKDK’s Second Friday Book Club discussion airs the second Friday of each month on the 9am Coffee Hour. Join the regular mugs for the discussion at Books on Main in Downtown Newberry the Thursday before the second Friday at 5:30pm. The program is also re-aired the Sunday following the second Friday at 6:30pm. Books on Main, the Second Friday Book Club sponsor offers 20% off all 2nd Friday books. Please send your suggestions or comments to contactus@wkdk.com. Books are subject to change so stay tuned to AM 1240 and visit Books on Main for the latest list.
We now have a Facebook page for our 2nd Friday Book Club!
Click HERE for more information...join the discussion online!
January l February l March l April l May l June l July
August l September l October l November l December
January
The Shack
By William P. Young
Mackenzie (Mack) Allen Philips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack one wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever. What he learns there is transforming readers around the world…
Discussion Leader: Elizabeth Morgan
Book Discussion: January 8 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: January 9 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Re-aired: January 11 @ 6:30pmFebruary
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
By: David Wroblewski
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm--and into Edgar's mother's affections. Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.
Discussion Leader: Larry Ellis
Book Discussion: February 12 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: February 13 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Re-aired: February 15 @ 6:30pmMarch
Salt: A World History
By: Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World, here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions.
Discussion Leader: Andy Hawkins
Book Discussion: March 12 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: March 13 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Re-aired: March 15 @ 6:30pmApril
The Diamond Age, Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
By: Neil Stephenson
The Diamond Age is set primarily in a far-future Shanghai at a time when nations have been superseded by enclaves of common cultures ("claves”). The novel is simultaneously science fiction, fantasy and a masterful political thriller. Treating nanotechnology as he did virtual reality in his first novel Snow Crash, Stephenson presents several engaging characters. John Percival Hackworth is an engineer living in a neo-Victorian clave, who is commissioned by one of the world's most powerful men to create a Primer that might enable the man's granddaughter to be educated in ways superior to the "straight and narrow." When Hackworth is mugged, an illegal copy of the Primer falls into the hands of a working-class girl named Nell, and a most deadly game is afoot. Stephenson weaves several plot threads at once, as the paths of Nell, Hackworth and other significant characters-notably Nell's brother Harrv, Hackworth's daughter Fiona and an actress named Miranda-converge and diverge across continents and complications, most brought about by Hackworth's actions and Nell's development. Building steadily to a wholly earned and intriguing climax, this long novel, which presents its sometimes difficult technical concepts in accessible ways, should appeal to readers other than habitual science fiction fans.
Discussion Leader: Larry Ellis
Book Discussion: April 9 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: April 10 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: April 12 @ 6:30pmMay
Garden Spells
By: Sarah Addison Allen
Two gifted sisters draw on their talents to belatedly forge a bond and find their ways in life in Allen's easygoing debut novel. Thirty-four-year-old Claire Waverley manifests her talent in cooking; using edible flowers, Claire creates dishes that affect the eater in curious ways. But not all Waverley women embrace their gifts; some, including Claire's mother, escape the family's eccentric reputation by running away. She abandoned Claire and her sister when they were young. Consequently, Claire has remained close to home, unwilling to open up to new people or experiences. Claire's younger sister, Sydney, however, followed in their mother's footsteps 10 years ago and left for New York, and, after a string of abusive, roustabout boyfriends, returns to Bascom, N.C., with her five-year-old daughter, Bay. As Sydney reacquaints herself with old friends and rivals, she discovers her own Waverley magic. Claire, in turn, begins to open up to her sister and in the process learns how to welcome other possibilities.
Discussion Leader: Andy Hawkins
Book Discussion: May 7 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: May 8 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: May 10 @ 6:30pmJune
Queen of the Road
By: Doreen Orion
A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir. Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She’s a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests “chucking it all” to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, “Why can’t you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?” But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats—and no agenda—in a 340-square-foot bus. The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers. Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever.
Discussion Leader: Elizabeth Morgan
Book Discussion: June 4 @ 5:30pm, Sonic Drive-In* on Wilson Rd
*Milkshake testing in honor of June Dairy Month!
Discussion Aired: June 12 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: June 14 @ 6:30pmJuly
Serena
By: Ron Rash
An award-winning writer pens this gothic tale of greed, corruption, and revenge set against the backdrop of the wilderness of 1920s North Carolina and America's burgeoning environmental movement. The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement. Yet when Serena begins to suspect that George's allegiances may lie elsewhere, she unleashes her full fury on the young mountain woman who bore his illegitimate child the year before. Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a powerfully riveting story that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.
Discussion Leader: Larry Ellis
Book Discussion: July 9 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: July 10 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: July 12 @ 6:30pmAugust
Ms. Hempel Chronicles
By: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
A National Book Award finalist in 2004, Bynum returns with an intricate and absorbing collection of eight interconnected stories about Beatrice Hempel, a middle school English teacher. Ms. Hempel is the sort of teacher students enjoy, and despite feeling disenchanted with her job, she regards her students as intelligent, insightful and sometimes fascinating. Ms. Beatrice Hempel, teacher of seventh grade, is new to teaching, new to the school, newly engaged, and newly bereft of her idiosyncratic father. Grappling awkwardly with her newness, she struggles to figure out what is expected of her in life and at work. Is it acceptable to introduce swear words into the English curriculum, enlist students to write their own report cards, or bring up personal experiences while teaching a sex-education class? The novel is really about the profound experience of normal days: finding the remarkable in the unremarkable, the sublime in the routine, a sudden burst of the soul against the tick-tock of the clock. As in life, the plot's movement yields to the force of the Hempel's day-in and day-out, but also, quite unexpectedly, draws us into the subtle undercurrent of her intimate journey toward spiritual plenitude. Ms. Hempel's soul-searching makes gentle cameo appearances at the surface of her daily grind. The novel's power lies in this perfect tension between schoolmarm and muse.
Discussion Leader: Susan Harrison
Book Discussion: August 13 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: August 14 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: August 16 @ 6:30pmSeptember
The Book of Air and Shadows
By: Michael Gruber
Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery...or self-destruction. Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a lethal conspiracy in which no one is who they seem.
Discussion Leader: Heather Hawkins
Book Discussion: September 10 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: September 11 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: September 13 @ 6:30pmOctober: Berry’s Best Seller!
TBA - Books on Main owner Randy Berry will select one of his Best Sellers.
Discussion Leader: Randy Berry/Heather Hawkins
Book Discussion: October 8 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: October 9 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: October 11 @ 6:30pmNovember
A Voyage Long and Strange
By: Tony Horwitz
On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus’s landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 160-something. Did nothing happen in between? Horwitz decides to find out, and in A Voyage Long and Strange he uncovers the neglected story of America’s founding by Europeans. He begins a thousand years ago, with the Vikings, and then tells the dramatic tale of conquistadors, castaways, French voyageurs, Moorish slaves, and many others who roamed and rampaged across half the states of the present-day U.S. continent, long before the Mayflower landed. An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves
Discussion Leader: Kristi Key
Book Discussion: November 12 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: November 13 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: November 15 @ 6:30pmDecember
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By: Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrow
To celebrate the magic of letters and their potential for impact, each regular mug will be asked to bring a hand written letter that he or she will mail after the discussion! No e-mails allowed.
January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Discussion Leader: Sandy Smith
Book Discussion: December 10 @ 5:30pm, Books on Main
Discussion Aired: December 11 during the 9am Coffee Hour
Reaired: December 13 @ 6:30pm
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