Pageturners Book Club (Ages 16+)

2025 EVENTS

Pageturners Book Club (Ages16+) – Wednesday, January 25 (10:15 am) 

  The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain 

 Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving Day, the Bravos are in Texas Stadium, slated to be part of the halftime show. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years. 

 Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation. 

Pageturners Book Club (Ages16+) – Wednesday, February 26 (10:15 am) 

  The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s” by Tiffany Midge 

“Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s” is a powerful and compelling collection of Tiffany Midge’s musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. Artfully blending sly humor, social commentary, and meditations on love and loss, Midge weaves short, standalone musings into a memoir that stares down colonialism while chastising hipsters for abusing pumpkin spice. 

Pageturners Book Club (Ages16+) – Wednesday, March 26 (10:15 am) 

  The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Verge” by Lidia Yuknavitch 

The landscape of “Verge” is peopled with characters who are innocent and imperfect, wise and endangered: an eight-year-old black-market medical courier, a restless lover haunted by memories of his mother, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison, all of them wounded but grasping toward transcendence. Clear-eyed yet inspiring, “Verge” challenges us with moments of uncomfortable truth, even as it urges us to place our faith not in the flimsy guardrails of society but in the memories held—and told—by our own individual bodies. 

2024 EVENTS

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, January 24 (10:15 am)

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World” by Jamil Zaki.

In this groundbreaking book, Zaki shares cutting-edge research, including experiments from his own lab, showing that empathy is not a fixed trait—something we’re born with or not—but rather a skill that can be strengthened through effort. He also tells the stories of people who embody this new perspective, fighting for kindness in the most difficult of circumstances. Pageturner discussions are lecture-based and open to any adult reader. Book will be available for check out at the the Reference Desk.

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, February 28 (10:15 am) 

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “The Water Knife” by Paolo Bacigalupi.  

Paolo Bacigalupi’s near-future thriller, “The Water Knife”, tells the story of Angel Velasquez, a “water knife” working for the state of Nevada trying to infiltrate and destroy Arizona’s water supply and investigate rumors of senior legal rights to water from the Colorado River. The novel cycles between three points of view: Angel; Maria Villarosa, a Texas refugee; and Lucy Monroe, an award-winning journalist. Pageturner discussions are lecture-based and open to any adult reader. Books are available for check out at the the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected] 

Pageturners Bookclub – Wednesday, March 27 (10:15 am) 

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “The Hurting Kind” by Ada Limón. 

“The Hurting Kind” is an astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. Pageturner discussions are lecture-based and open to any adult reader. Books are available for check out at the the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected] 

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, April 24 (10:15 am) 

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Mama’s Last Hug” by Franz de Waal.  

2023 Events

Pageturners Book Club – January Read: “No-No Boy” by John Okada – Wednesday, January 25 (10:15 am)

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing“No-No Boy” by John Okada on the fourth Wednesday of the month. After their forcible relocation to internment camps during World War II, Japanese Americans were expected to go on with their lives as though nothing had happened, assimilating as well as they could in a changed America. But some men resisted. They became known as “no-no boys,” for twice having answered no on a compulsory government survey asking whether they were willing to serve in the U.S. armed forces and to swear allegiance to the United States. No-No Boy tells the story of one such draft resister, Ichiro Yamada, whose refusal to comply with the U.S. government earns him two years in prison and the disapproval of his family and community in Seattle. A touchstone of the immigrant experience in America, it dispels the “model minority” myth and asks pointed questions about assimilation, identity, and loyalty. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – February Read: “The Moor’s Account” by Laila Lalami – Wednesday, February 22 (10:15 am)

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “The Moor’s Account” by Laila Lalami on the fourth Wednesday of the month. In this stunning work of historical fiction, Laila Lalami brings us the imagined memoirs of the first black explorer of America, a Moroccan slave whose testimony was left out of the official record. “The Moor’s Account” captures Estebanico’s voice and vision, giving us an alternate narrative for this famed expedition. As this dramatic chronicle unfolds, we come to understand that, contrary to popular belief, black men played a significant part in New World exploration, and that Native American men and women were not merely silent witnesses to it. In Laila Lalami’s deft hands, Estebanico’s memoir illuminates the ways in which stories can transmigrate into history, even as storytelling can offer a chance at redemption and survival. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, March 22 (10:15 am)

March Read: “All You Can Ever Know” by Nicole Chung

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “All You Can Ever Know” by Nicole Chung on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. “All You Can Ever Know” is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, April 26 (10:15 am)

April Read: “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennet

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennet on the fourth Wednesday of the month. The novel is a multi-generational family saga set between the 1940s to the 1990s and centers on identical twin sisters Desiree and Estelle “Stella” Vignes and their daughters Jude and Kennedy. Desiree and Stella are light-skinned black sisters who were raised in the fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana and witnessed the lynching of their father in the 1940s. In 1954, at the age of 16, the twins run away to New Orleans. However, Stella disappears shortly thereafter only to be living her life in secret as a white woman.

Pick up a copy of the book at the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, May 24 (10:15 am)

May Read: “Into the Beautiful North” by Luis Alberto Urrea

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Into the Beautiful North” by Luis Alberto Urrea on the fourth Wednesday of the month. This powerful novel from a bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author tells the story of a young woman’s journey—both emotionally and physically—as she travels north to America. Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the US to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn’t the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village — they’ve all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men — her own “Siete Magníficos” — to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

Pick up a copy of the book at the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, June 28 (10:15 am)

June Read: “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood” by Alexandra Fuller

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood” by Alexandra Fuller on the fourth Wednesday of the month. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.

Pick up a copy of the book at the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected]

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, August 30 (10:15 am)

The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Facing the Mountain: An Inspiring Story of Japanese American Patriots in World War II” by Daniel James Brown. The New York Times bestselling author of “The Boys in the Boat”, writes a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and resistance, focusing on four Japanese American men and their families, and the contributions and sacrifices that they made for the sake of the nation. In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible.

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, September 27 (10:15 am)

  The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews. Recently made into an Oscar-winning film, “Women Talking” follows the lives of a group of Mennonite women living through terrible events that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia.

Book Summary:

  One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.
While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women-all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in-have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?
Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, October 25 (10:15 am)

  The Pageturners Book Club is discussing “On Trails: an Exploration” by Robert Moor. New York Times Bestseller and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, Recently made into an Oscar-winning film, “On Trails” is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.

  Pageturner discussions are lecture-based and open to any adult reader. Books are available for check out at the the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected] 

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, November 29 (10:15 am) 

We’re having a special November Pageturners, we’re meeting on the fifth Wednesday of the month and at City Hall in Conference Room 6. We don’t have a shared title this time and we are encouraging attendees to bring a book that they would purchase for a loved one. This is a great opportunity for members to share one of their favorite titles and discover new ones. Whether it’s a classic novel, a popular bestseller, or a hidden gem, the Pageturners Book Club is open to exploring new genres and authors.

  Pageturner discussions are speaker-based and open to any adult reader. Books are available for check out at the the Reference Desk. For more information call or email JD Smithson, 208-769-2315 ext 455., [email protected] 

2022 Events

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, January 26 (10:15 am)

January Read: Faithful and Virtuous Night

The Library is pleased to welcome Georgia Tiffany and Ron McFarland as the discussion leaders for January’s book club pick Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Glück. This is the first book in the “Let’s Talk About It” (LTAI) series being hosted by the Pageturners, using books provided by the Idaho Commission for Libraries. Pageturner discussions are open to any adult reader and books are available for check out at the Research and Information Desk. Discussion leaders are provided by the Idaho Humanities Council.

The Let’s Talk About It program is made possible by the Idaho Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services which administers the Library Services and Technology Act, and the program is administered by the Idaho Commission for Libraries. Local support is provided by the Friends of the Library.

Pageturners Book Club – Wednesday, February 23 (10:15 am)