All are welcome to join lively discussions of books selected annually by regular participants. Readers are welcome to sit in on a session to meet the group. We meet the third Tuesday of every month in the Collins Room, Ipswich Library, from 6:30-7:45 PM. Registration is not required. We read mainly current fiction but are open to any suggestions from readers. Each month, Ipswich Library staff order the books from the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium and make copies available in multiple media. Discussions are animated and book selections can be eclectic. Topics can include the book’s merits, its relation to other books, and lessons conveyed. The author’s life and body of works are often included.

For more information contact: Pam Whitmore at pam_whitmore@yahoo.com or 814-572-6594

This month's book is: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

About the book:

"This novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation. A chance encounter with Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar on New Year's Eve 1938 catapults twenty-five-year-old Wall Street secretary Katey Kontent into a year-long journey in the upper echelons of New York society, where she befriends a shy multi-millionaire, an Upper East Side ne'er-do-well, and a single-minded widow. Here in the executive suites of Conde Nast rareified environs, she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. She experiences firsthand the poise secured by wealth and station and the failed aspirations that lie just below the surface. The novel offers a sparkling depiction of New York's social strata, intricate imagery and themes, a finely crafted unfolding of the unforeseen, and immensely appealing characters, the heroine in particular."