The Alliance Public Library Book Club has been established to foster social interaction between our patrons through open discussion of both fiction and nonfiction marterial.
The Alliance Public Library Book Club is open to all who wish to attend. The group meets on the 4th Tuesday of the month at 1:00 p.m. at the library. The books are made available via inter library loan, and a small postage fee of $1 for return shipping may apply.
To have your email added to our book club mailing list, please forward your request to enelson@cityofalliance.net.
Selected 2021 Books
Alliance Public Book Club Kits are available to local books clubs and include 4 to 5 copies of each book and discussion questions. Individuals may check out the kits for 3 weeks to distribute to their book members. The person checking out the kit is responsible for returning the kit as a whole to the library.
To reserve a Book Club Kit, please call the library at 308-762-1387 or visit the Circulation Desk.
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins: Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse and comes up to the register with a few books he would like to buy—two of them her favorites. Javier is erudite. He is charming. And, unbeknownst to Lydia, he is the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and eight-year-old Luca soon find themselves miles and worlds away from their comfortable middle-class existence. Instantly transformed into migrants, Lydia and Luca ride la bestia—trains that make their way north toward the United States, which is the only place Javier’s reach doesn’t extend. As they join the countless people trying to reach el norte, Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate: Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeymoon: Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she’ll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.
The Hidden Life of Trees: what they feel, how they communicate by Peter Wohlleben: In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig: Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place
Nomadland by Jessica Bruder: From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads.
Nomadland tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.
Book Club Kits are available for Inter-Library Loan from a number of Nebraska libraries.
Requests for Book Club Kits must be made by Alliance Public Library staff. The patron making the request is responsible for paying the return shipping fee. As a shared resource, availability is dependent on demand.
Books are shipped to and distributed by the Alliance Public Library. Book Club members check out the individual books on their library accounts. The patron checking out the book is responsible for its safe return to the library.
Lists of Book Club Kits can be found at the following:
- APL Book Club Kits (see tab above)
- Nebraska Library Book Club Kits
- Nebraska Library Commission Book Club Kits
Book Club Resource Websites: