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An exciting program is now being offered at the Ballston Spa Public Library. Ballston Spa Reads is a way to get the local community to come together, read some great books and share viewpoints. Starting in January, we will have five books available to borrow from our library (these five books were chosen by the library patrons and staff members as books worthy of discussion). The books include: The Garden of Evening Mists, Me Before You, The Dirty Life, Cutting for Stone, and Unbroken. You do not have to read all five books in order to participate in our program. You can come in to borrow some of these great reads and vote once on your favorite book from January 2, 2013 – March 31, 2014. The winning book, chosen by the community, will be the subject of several library programs in the spring. The Ballston Spa Reads book will be announced on April 4, 2014! Comment under each book title below to get some book discussion started...

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The Garden of Evening Mists

The Garden of Evening Mists
By Tan Twan Eng

Yun Lling Teoh, the scarred lone survivor of a brutal Japanese wartime camp, seeks solace among the jungle-fringed tea plantations of Cameron Highlands.  There she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the enigmatic Aritomo, exiled former gardener of th e emperor of Japan.  Despite her hatred of the Japanese, Yun Ling seeks to engage Aritomo to create a garden in memory of her sister, who died in the camp.  Aritomo refuses but agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice "until the monsoon comes."  Then she can design a garden for herself.

Me Before You

Me Before You
By JoJo Moyes

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life-steady boyfriend, close family-who has barely been farther afield that their tiny village.  She takes a badly needed job working for ex-Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident.  Will has always lived a huge life-big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel-and now he's pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.



The Dirty Life

The Dirty Life
By Kristin Kimball

This book is the story of the two love affairs that interrupted the trajectory of my life: one with farming-that dirty, concupiscent art-and the other with a complicated and exasperating farmer.  K. Kimball, a farmer from Essex Co, NY.

Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone
By Abraham Verghese

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon.  Orphaned by their mother's death and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopa hovers on the brink of revolution.

Unbroken

Unbroken
By Laura Hillenbrand

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood.  Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared.  It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard.  So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.