On February 9th, 2009 the Monday Evening Book Club will discuss Bill Bryson's hilarious autobiography The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. We will meet in the Program Room at 7 pm.More about this book ...
For more information about the author, go to Bill Bryson's website.
You can also watch an interview with Bill Bryson about his autobiography.
... and don't miss this priceless glimpse of 50's government propaganda entitled "Duck and Cover".
On February 11, 2009 the Seniors Book Club will meet in the 2nd floor Training Room to discuss The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. Published under the title Someone knows my name in the USA, Australia and New Zealand, the book won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and the 2007 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Most recently it was nominated as a 2009 Canada Reads selection. This synopsis of the novel is quoted from the contest website:Over the course of this epic novel, Aminata is transformed into a storyteller extraordinaire. She spins the astonishing tale of her remarkable travels from Africa to America and back again. Along the way, a sojourn in Nova Scotia illuminates a long-neglected chapter in Canadian history.
Aminata’s autobiography — or, in her words, “ghost story” — begins with her idyllic childhood in West Africa. Happy times are cut short when she is abducted at age 11, placed in chains, taken across the sea and forced into slavery at an indigo plantation in South Carolina.
But Aminata is a survivor and this is just one chapter in her remarkable life story. In a fitting twist for a book featured on Canada Reads, Aminata discovers that literacy just might be her ticket to a new life.
There is a wealth of background information available on this topic. Here are some interesting links for you to peruse:
A video interview with Lawrence Hill
An online exhibit of Daniel G. Hill's life and work (created by his son, Lawrence Hill)
Black Loyalist documents (including a transcription of "The Book of Negroes")
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