The Geisel Library Book Group is an informal book club welcoming all students, faculty, staff, and monastic members of Saint Anselm College. We provide copies of the books we read through our print, ebook and audiobook (Overdrive/Libby) collections and from the NH State Library and other participating libraries for our attendees to borrow. Then we meet in the Library Reading Room or over Zoom to discuss the popular fiction and non-fiction titles.
For more information, contact Melinda Malik, Assistant Library Director, Head of Reference & Instructional Services.
For the spring 2025 semester we're going to try something new and meet on Friday's at 12:30 p.m.
Attendees are invited to bring their bag lunches with them.
Friday, February 21, 2025 | 12:30p.m. | Library Classroom (upper level)
"Our Nig is the tale of a mixed-race girl, Frado, abandoned by her white mother after the death of the child's black father. Frado becomes the servant of the Bellmonts, a lower-middle-class white family in the free North, while slavery is still legal in the South, and suffers numerous abuses in their household. Frado's story is a tragic one; having left the Bellmonts, she eventually marries a black fugitive slave, who later abandons her" (GoodReads.com).
Published in 1859, this book is considered to be one of the first books written by an African American woman to be published in the United States (Wikipedia).
Our Nig or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Friday, March 28, 2025 | 12:30 p.m. | Library Classroom (upper level)
"To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century. Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy" (GoodReads.com).
A Piece of the World by Friday, April 25, 2025 | 12:30 p.m. | Library Classroom (upper level)
"A 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight" (GoodReads.com).
The Samurai's Garden by 