Book Club - Read Around the World

Enjoy lively discussions with others on fictional works highlighting different cultures from around the world.

Dec 6 | A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman is a story of a grumpy old man who points at people he dislikes as if they are burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has steadfast principles, uncompromising routines and a short fuse. He doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time. People call him the harsh and bitter neighbor from the hell. Behind this cranky exterior of Ove, there is a story and sadness. This grumpy but loveable man, Ove’s solitary world turned upside down when a young family moves in his neighborhood.

Jan 3 | Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Feb 7 | Born A Crime by Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.

FAQs

Will the book be available for me to borrow?
Yes! Stop in to your local branch or call 330.452.0665 to reserve your copy.  

Where can I find books by my favorite author, explore similar authors, or find the next book in the series I'm reading?
You can get recommendations from your librarian or check out our blog, where librarians highlight other favorites from bestselling authors.