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Book Club Program





Named Best Literary Magnet By Atlanta Magazine 2007

Past Selections:

July, 2008:
House of Sand and Fog
by Andre Dubus III

June, 2008:
Courtesans
by Katie Hickman

May, 2008:
Confederates in the Attic
by Tony Horwitz

April, 2008:
The Ice Queen
by Alice Hoffman

March, 2008:
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day
by Pearl Cleage

The Literary Center at the Margaret Mitchell House presents

Atlanta Burning Book Club

Get Lit!

If you’re in a book club or looking for reading ideas, join us as we read great books.

Each month our Atlanta Burning Book Club will select an author who will soon visit the Literary Center at The Margaret Mitchell House.

Why should your book club register with us? 

• Early updates on authors visiting The Lit Center
• Exclusive opportunities to engage with select authors
• Networking opportunities with other book clubs
• Bring six or more members from your book club and pay just $5 per person. (regular admission is $10; free for MMH members) Pre-payment required: 404-814-2058

To register, send book club name, number of members, anda contact name with email address to sarah.dollacker@gwtw.org

September’s Selection:
Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days

Synopsis:

This series of interlocking tales is a humorous account of life in fictitious Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a heartland small town. The opening vignettes are written in the form and style of a history and explains the town's past.  Later stories chronicle the lives, concerns, and activities of its inhabitants.

Reviews:

Daily Mail - Garrison Keillor's fictional Midwestern town, Lake Wobegon, has long since passed into literary legend. Lake Wobegon Days, his first unforgettable portrait of life in the American small-town named after an Indian word meaning 'Here we are!' or 'We sat all day in the rain waiting for you', is a modern classic of warmth, humor and tenderness which introduces the reader to a cast of characters to rival Mark Twain.

The Evening Standard - Wryly affectionate and irresistibly funny, it's a delight to read and very good company.

Lake Wobegon Study Guide by Garrison Keillor

Other Books by Garrison Keillor:

Pontoon
News from Lake Wobegon
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
Home on the Prairie: Stories from Lake Wobegon
Leaving Home: A Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories
Wobegon Boy
Happy to be Here
The Book of Guys: Stories

The Literary Center welcomes Garrison Keillor to Atlanta History Center on Friday, September 26 to discuss his new title Liberty. More information about Garrison Keillor’s upcoming visit.

August’s Selection:
Anne Rivers Siddons’ Colony

Synopsis:

When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a nineteen-year-old bride from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. She, as well as everyone else, is certain she will never fit in. And of course, she doesn't...at first.

But over the many summers she spends there, Maude comes to cherish life in the colony, as she does the people who share it with her. There is her husband Peter, consumed with a darkness of spirit; her adored but dangerously fragile children; her domineering mother-in-law, who teaches her that it is the women who posses the strength to keep the colony intact; and Maine native Micah Willis, who is ultimately Maude's truest friend.

This brilliant novel, rich with emotion, is filled with appealing, intense, and indomitable characters. Anne Rivers Siddons paints a portrait of a woman determined to preserve the spirit of past generations--and the future of a place where she becomes who she is...a place called Colony.

Reviews:

The New York Times - "An outstanding multigenerational novel...We are hooked from the moment we meet Maude."

Kirkus Reviews – “If it's gothic, Siddons (Outer Banks, King's Oak, etc.) can do it, or so it would appear in this latest novel destined for commercial success. In it, she takes her gifts for melodrama and tangling family trees up north, to a summer colony for Boston Brahmins on the coast of Maine, called simply "Retreat." Fans will be doing cartwheels, and others will queue up.”

Reading Group Guide

Other Books by Anne Rivers Siddons:

Peachtree Road
King’s Oak
Outer Banks
Nora, Nora
Hill Towns
Fox’s Earth
Low Country
Downtown
Heartbreak Hotel
Sweetwater Creek

Anne Rivers Siddons visits The Literary Center on Wednesday, September 10 to discuss her new novel, Off Season. For the special book club price, the club's contact must call 404-814-2058 to pay for six or more members in advance. More information about Anne Rivers Siddons’s upcoming visit.