Join us at the Alachua Branch for a fun monthly book discussion. Each month we will select one Adult Fiction or Nonfiction title to read and discuss it as a group. Meetings will be held on the third Tuesday of each month at 2 p.m. in the Meeting Room. Copies of the current book will be available upon request at the Circulation Desk. To confirm availability, please call 386-462-2592
Currently Reading:
The Wager: a Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann
Tuesday, July 15, 2:00 p.m., Alachua Branch Meeting Room
On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.
But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.
The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound. (Goodreads)
Upcoming Meetings:
August 19 - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
September 16 - TBD
Previously Read:
The Water Dancer by Ta-Hahisi Coates
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan
Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
Good Company by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Maid by Nita Prose
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict
Interested in other book clubs? Learn about all our groups on our Book Clubs page.