The March book selection for the Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.  When Breath Becomes Air is a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question--What makes a life worth living?

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.  One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. 

When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both. (From the publisher)



How would you describe Dr. Paul Kalanithi?  What kind of a person was he?



One of the ironies of Kalanithi's life is that he postponed learning how to live in order to learn how to be a doctor.  But once he knew he had lung cancer, he had to learn how to die.  What are the ways in which he learned to live...and learned to face his death?  Would you be as brave and thoughtful as Kalanithi was? 




Once Kalanithi and his wife learned that he had terminal cancer, why did they decide to have a child?  Even Kalanithi wonders if having a child wouldn't make it harder to die.  What would you do?



How would you (or will you) go about dying?  How do you think of death--as something distant, something frightening or horrible, as part of the normal spectrum of life, as a closing of this chapter of your life and the opening of another?  What comes to mind when you think of your own demise?



Do you  find When Breath Becomes Air enlightening, insightful, spiritual, maudlin?  Would you describe it as an important book or merely interesting?

(Questions by LitLovers)

    The Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group is reading Everyone Brave is Forgiven  by Chris Cleave for the February book selection. 
    It's 1939, and the world is at war.  Within an hour of hostilities being declared in Britain, Mary, a headstrong young socialite, volunteers to serve.  She is assigned to teach children who have been rejected by the countryside to which they were evacuated.  It is in this role that Mary meets Tom, an education administrator in her school district.
    Their professional relationship quickly becomes personal.  But when Mary meets Alistair, Tom's best friend who has enlisted, the three are drawn into a love triangle that they must navigate while trying to survive an escalating war.
    Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a stunning examination of what it means to love, lose and remain courageous.
    Both Mary and Alistair sign up to be part of the war effort almost immediately after war is declared. What are their motivations for doing so?  How does each of them serve?  Why is Mary surprised by her assignment?
    When Mary first begins spending time with Tom, she describes him as "Thoughtful.  Interesting. Compassionate." (p. 41)  What did you think of him?  Are the two well suited for each other?  Why, or why not?
    In a letter, Mary writes, "I was brought up to believe that everyone brave is forgiven, but in wartime courage is cheap and clemency out of season." (p. 245)  Why do you think Chris Cleave chose to take the title of his novel from this line?  Does your interpretation of the title change when you read it in the full context of the quote?  In what ways?
    Early in the novel, while Mary is with Tom, she is "thinking how much she was enjoying the war." (p. 86)  Why might Mary enjoy the war?  What new freedoms are afforded to her in wartime?
    After seeing the effects of one of the air raids, Mary "knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of this.  It was hardly fair on the living." (p. 268)  What does Mary see that leads her to have this insight?  What effect does not speaking of his experiences in war have on Alistair?
    Let us know what you think of Everyone Brave is Forgiven.

The Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group is reading Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen for the January 2018 book selection.  For generations the Millers have lived in Miller's Valley.  Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty.  As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love.  Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be "a place where it's just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content."

Miller's Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home.  As Mimi says, "No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go."  Miller's Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.  (From the publisher.)

How would you describe Mimi as the book opens, and how does she change over the course of the novel?  What does she come to learn, as she matures, about place and home?

Why is Mimi so tied to the valley? Is her reluctance merely a childish fear to move beyond a familiar world?  Or is it something else?

The book asks an important question about how closely our identities are tied to our origins, both place and family.  Do we change when we adapt to new experiences and when we lose what we treasure?  Do we ever really leave the past behind us?

Let us know what you think!

It's December already!  This is the month to read a Holiday Book.  Stop in the library and check out a holiday book you have never read or an old favorite. The Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group wishes you Happy Holidays!

The book selection for the Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group for November is Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance.  Hillbilly Elegy is the UW-Madison Go Big Read selection for 2017-2018.  Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.  A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures,  this is the story of how upward mobility really feels. 


In what way is the Appalachian culture described in Hillbilly Elegy a "culture in trouble"? 


What are the positive values of the culture Vance talks about in the book?


The author's mother is arguably the book's most powerful figure.  How would you describe her and her struggle with addiction?  How did the violence between her own parents, Mamaw and Papaw, affect her own adulthood?


Critics of Hillbilly Elegy accuse Vance of "blaming the victim" rather than providing a sound analysis of the structural issues left unaddressed by government.  What do you think?


What does this book bring to the national conversation about poverty--its roots and its persistence?


Let us know what you think!

The book selection for the Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group for October is Moonglow by Michael Chabon.  This is a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure---and the forces that work to destroy us. 


In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother's home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather.  Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as "my grandfather." 


It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact--and the creative power--of keeping secrets and telling lies.


A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive. (From the publisher.)


The idea of storytelling provides the novel's frame.  Its opening words, "This is how I heard the story," are echoed in its closing sentence, in which the dying grandfather is imagined "sculling along the surface of the sea of pain a little nearer to his story's end or maybe...toward the story on the opposite shore that was waiting to begin."  (pg 428)  Why does the grandfather urge the narrator to "write it down" at the end of the book?


Many readers and even reviewers have taken Moonglow at face value as a memoir.  How did you feel about the novel's form of a false memoir.  Did you find it unsettling?  What are the expectations that you bring to a memoir and fiction?


How does the grandfather's admiration for, and disillusionment with Wernher von Braun impact the novel?  What happens to the grandfather's rage when he finally meets Wernher von Braun?


What are the assumptions and beliefs that the narrator brings when he speaks with his grandfather?  How and why do they change over the course of the novel?


What do you think is the significance of the novel's title?  What is the significance of the recurring motif of the moon?


Let us know what you think of Moonglow.

The book selection for September for the Kilbourn Public Library Book Discussion Group is Except for His Wings by Michael Dodd.  Michael lives in Madison, Wisconsin but grew up in Texas.  Michael is a past employee and volunteer at the Kilbourn Public Library.  We are excited to be reading his newest book.


Corny Shane is a recovering alcoholic trying to rebuild his shattered life in the Texas Hill Country after his wife abandoned him and their children.  One day his eleven-year-old daughter comes home with a story about a boy with wings who appeared in the town park.  Except for His Wings  is the story of the turmoil his appearance creates in the small town of Blakesfield, a story of uncertainty and confusion, of old wounds and new fears, of sorrow and of hope. 


How did you experience this book?  Were you engaged immediately or did it take you a while to "get into it"? 


Describe the main characters.  Do the main characters change or mature by the end of the book?  What do they learn about themselves?


What main ideas and themes does the author explore?


Where there any passages that strike you as insightful, even profound?


Is the ending satisfying?  If so, why?  If not, why not....and how would you change it?


If you could ask the author a question, what would you ask?


Let us know what you think of Except for His Wings.