The Pacific Beach Library Book Discussion Group is designed for all adult readers who want to talk about books, and provides an informal forum for the discussion of one selected book each month.

The Book Discussion Group meets in the Meeting Room/Gallery at the Pacific Beach/Taylor Library on the first Wednesday of each month, at 6:30 p.m. At the January meeting, participants select the books that will be read by the Book Discussion Group throughout the rest of the year.

Copies of each month's selection may be picked up at the Circulation Desk of the Pacific Beach/Taylor Library.

For additional information about the PB Library Book Discussion Group, please send email to the Book Discussion Group Coordinator.

For a color brochure which describes the book discusion group selections for 2012, please click on the following link:

  2012 Book Discussion Brochure

		January 4 Meet to select titles for 2012.
		February 1 Moloka'i  by Alan Brennert
	Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end—but instead she discovers it is only just beginning. (One Book, One San Diego)
		March 7 In the Garden of Beasts  by Erik Larson
	The bestselling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler's rise to power. The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.
		April 4 Sky of Red Poppies  by Zohreh Ghahremani
	Set against the backdrop of a politically divided 1960's Iran under rule of the Shah, Sky of Red Poppies is a novel about culture, politics, and the redeeming power of friendships. Roya, the daughter of a prominent family, is envious of the fierce independence of her religious classmate Shireen. But Shireen has secrets of her own. Together, Roya and Shireen contend with becoming the women they want to be and, in doing so, make decisions that will cause their tragic undoing. (One Book, One San Diego)
		May 2 Room  by Emma Donoghue
	Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful—and attempts a nail-biting escape.
		June 6 Into the Beautiful North  by Luis Alberto Urrea
	The story of Nayeli, a young taco shop worker living in the Mexican village of Tres Camarones. Upon realizing that nearly all the men from her town have moved North, Nayeli and three of her friends travel to the San Diego area in hopes of finding men to bring back to Mexico. The central characters encounter surprises along the way, in this funny yet powerful tale of their journey. (One Book, One San Diego)
		July 11 (date moved due to July 4 Holiday) Zeitoun  by Dave Eggers
	In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, longtime New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water. In the days after the storm, Abdulrahman traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, on September 6, 2005, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared—arrested and accused of being an agent of al Qaeda.
		August 1 Half Broke Horses  by Jeannette Walls
	A true-life novel about Lily Casey Smith (the author's grandmother) who at age six helped her father break horses, at age fifteen left home to teach in a frontier town, and later as a wife and mother runs a vast ranch in Arizona where she survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy—but despite a life of hardscrabble drudgery still remains a woman of indomitable spirit.
		September 5 Clara and Mr. Tiffany  by Susan Vreeland
	Louis Comfort Tiffany staffs his studio with female artisans—a decision that protects him from strikes by the all-male union—but refuses to employ women who are married. Lucky for him, Clara Driscoll's romantic misfortunes insure that she can continue to craft the jewel-toned glass windows and lamps that catch both her eye and her imagination.
		October 3 Rise to Rebellion  by Jeff Shaara
	Spurred by the 1770 Boston Massacre, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington rally the colonists of America against King George III of Great Britain. More than a powerful portrait of the people and purpose of the revolution, this vivid account of history's most pivotal events reveals with new immediacy how philosophers became fighters, ideas their ammunition, and how a scattered group of colonies became the United States of America.
		November 7 The Tiger's Wife  by Téa Obreht
	In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather's recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with "the deathless man." But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger's wife.
		December 5 The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris  by David McCullough
	Between 1830 and 1900, hundreds of Americans—many of them future household names like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—migrated to Paris. McCullough shows first how the City of Light affected each of them in turn, and how they helped shape American art, medicine, writing, science, and politics in profound ways when they came back to the United States.
		January 2 (2013) Meet to select titles for 2013.

Although not selected for a Book Discussion Group meeting, voracious readers might be interested in book recommendations from members of the Book Discussion Group.