All About OurBook Club
Click to jump to the selected books Welcome to our book club page. It provides the Who, What, Where, and When details about our book club! We also share information about how to access books on NLS BARD. All are welcome to join us for these enjoyable discussions. The Council of Citizens with Low Vision International (CCLVI) is proud to sponsor and host this public book club.
Who?
We invite everyone to participate in our monthly book club meetings. Whether you’ve had a chance to read the book or not, you may enjoy the conversation. We are a global group of people interested in discussing the books we read. While we are the low vision affiliate of the American Council of the Blind, everyone is always welcome as members and our Zoom calls. (In other words, we invite individuals with all levels of visual acuity.) to join our discussions.
When and Where?
Each month, our book club meeting is held via Zoom on the third Thursday 8 PM ET. The Zoom login details are posted on CCLVI-Info & ACB Community lists. To join our list, please send an email to:
CCLVI-Info+subscribe@acblists.org or to our Webmaster at: CCLVIWebmaster@gmail.com
Coming in April 2025:
- Title: The Italian secretary: a further adventure of Sherlock Holmes
- Book Number: DB 63029
- Author by Carr, Caleb.
- Reading time 7 hours, 30 minutes.
- Narrated by Robert Sams.
Bard Description:
Detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate two deaths at the royal palace in Edinburgh, once home to Mary, Queen of Scots. Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, fears these killings are part of an assassination plot while Sherlock links them to the three-centuries-old murder of Mary’s confidante, Italian secretary David Rizzio.
Coming in March 2025:
- Title: Red earth, white earth
- Book Number: DB 25264
- Author by: Weaver, Will
- Reading time: 12 hours, 59 minutes.
Narrated: Bob Askey
Bard description:
After several successful years in Silicon Valley, Guy heads home to his ailing grandfather and begins an odyssey into his childhood at the family’s Minnesota farmstead. He teams up with his “blood brother,” Tom Little Wolf, and helps with the Indians’ struggle to reclaim their land.
February 2025 Book Selection:
- Title: Harry Truman’s excellent adventure: the true story of a great American road trip
- Book Number: DB 69543
- Author: Algeo, Matthew.
- Reading time 8 hours, 22 minutes.
- Narrated by Michael Kramer.
Bard Description:
The author retraces the 1953 2,500-mile cross-country road trip of Harry and Bess Truman. Describes the Trumans’ post-presidential life in Missouri, when they lived on Harry’s army pension, and provides first-person accounts of the original journey.
January 2025 Book Selection:
- Title: Not fade away: a memoir of senses lost and found
- Book Number: DB 80043
- by Alexander, Rebecca,
- Reading Time: 7 hours 59 minutes
- Narrated by: Kate Kiley
Book Description:
Autobiography of a woman born with Usher’s syndrome, a genetic condition that causes the gradual loss of hearing and vision. Chronicles the progression
of her condition, describes dealing with her diagnosis as a young adult, and recounts a devastating accident that left every bone in her body broken. 2014.
December 2024 Book Selection:
- Title: A Christmas Carol
- Author: Dickens, Charles.
- Book Number: DB 43546
- Reading Time: 3 hours 28 minutes
- Narrator: Clark Niederjohn.
Book Description
Classic nineteenth-century Christmas story set in England describes the conversion of grasping old miser Ebenezer Scrooge when he is visited by ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.
November 2024 Book Selection:
Title: The Briar Club
- Author: Kate Quinn
- Book Number: DB122866
- Reading Time: 15 hours, 4 minutes
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
Bard Description:
“The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era”
October 2024 Book Selection:
- Title: The women
- Author: Kristin Hannah.
- Book Number: DB 118896
- Reading Time: 15 hours
- Narrated by: Kristin Hannah and Julia Whelan.
Summary:
“Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope, and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets and becomes one of the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.”
September 2024 Book Selection:
- Title: Swan song
- Author: Hilderbrand, Elin,
- Book Number: DB 122048
- Reading Time: 13 hours 42 minutes
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett and Elin Hilderbrand.
Summary:
“Mysterious wealthy newcomers, the Richardsons, have bought a lavish house. But when it burns to the ground and their employee goes missing, the island is in for plenty of drama.”– From publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
August 2024 Book Selection:
Title: Homer the ninth life of a blind wonder cat
- Author: Cooper, Gwen
- Book Number: DB 106486
- Narrator: Trevathan, Mare
- Reading Time: 3 hours, 29 minutes
Summary:
this follow-up to Homer’s Odyssey (DB 69557), the author shares further stories of living with her blind rescue cat, Homer. She writes of the sudden fame Homer garnered after her first book’s publication, and the attention it drew for special-needs animals. 2015.
“The odds had always been stacked against Homer, the little blind kitten nobody wanted. But destiny took a hand the day he met Gwen Cooper, and with the publication twelve years later of the international best seller ‘Homer’s Odyssey, ‘ Homer went from beloved housecat to world-wide star. He became the scourge and darling of the reporters, photographers, videographers, bloggers, and radio hosts who clamored to meet him–dragging his hapless human behind him as he greeted fame with his usual joie de vivre and occasional ‘catitude.’ He became a spokes-cat for the cause of special-needs animals everywhere, and eventually the wise older mentor to the new special-needs kitten who would enter his and Gwen’s lives. Most importantly, Homer taught those who loved him best how to live and die with strength, dignity, and joy–and left behind a rescue community of ‘Homer’s Heroes’ that continues to save countless lives in his name.
June 2024 Book Selection:
o Title: The wolves come at night
o Author: Ellison, J. T.
o Book Number: DB 116626
o Reading Time: 13 hours, 36 minutes
o Narrated by: Rose, Elizabeth
Summary
“While the high-profile murder of a young country singer turns Nashville inside out, danger lurks in the woods beyond the city’s border. There was a witness to the terrible crime, a college student who stumbled onto the scene. When the girl goes missing, the police don’t know if she’s run for cover or been taken…or if something more sinister is happening. The truth will shatter Taylor’s career and bring her face to face with a deadly assassin who wants nothing more than to finish what they started. Taylor Jackson is back. And you’ve never seen her quite like this.”.
May 2024 Book Selection:
o Title: The light we carry overcoming in uncertain times
o Author: Michelle Obama
o Book Number: Db111237
o Reading time: 10 hours 3 minutes
o Narrated by: Michelle Obama
Summary
There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools
to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering
The question many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences?
What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama offers readers
a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate
the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter,
spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles—the
earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen
table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility,
encouraging readers to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness. “When we can recognize our own light, we become empowered
to use it,” writes Michelle Obama.
April 2024 Book Selection:
o Title: Under the Chinook: tales of a Montana veterinarian
o Author: Gustafson, R. W.,
o Reading Time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
o narrator : Blunn, Lea,.
Summary:
This Conrad veterinarian spins folksy tales about his 43 years of caring for animals in Montana’s Golden Triangle. Readers will encounter a backward enema; a Chinese doctor deal that netted 17 half-cows; a cow uterus packed on a pickup bumper; a pregnant cow with no bulls within 20 miles, and many other stories.
March 2024 Book Selection:
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- Title: The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir
- Author: Jennifer L. Ryan
- NLS book number: DB 87423
- Narrated by: Imogen Wilde, Adjoa Andoh, Laura Kirman, Tom Clegg, Gabrielle Glaister, Mike Grady.
- Reading Time: 11 hours 36 minutes
Summary
As the men from the village of Chilbury head off to fight in World War II, the vicar declares the church’s choir to be closed. Music professor Primrose Trent mobilizes the village’s women to organize as the Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. Relationships blossom and grow. “Just because the men have gone to war, why do we have to close the choir? And precisely when we need it most!” As England enters World War II’s dark early days, spirited music professor Primrose Trent, recently arrived at the village of Chilbury, emboldens the women of the town to defy the Vicar’s stuffy edict to shutter the church’s choir in the absence of men and instead “continue singing.” Resurrecting themselves as “The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir,” the women of this small village soon use their joint song to lift themselves, and the community, as the war tears through their lives. Told through letters and journals, THE CHILBURY LADIES’ CHOIR moves seamlessly from budding romances to village intrigues to heartbreaking matters of life and death. As we come to know the struggles of the charismatic members of this unforgettable outfit–a timid widow worried over her son at the front; the town beauty drawn to a rakish artist; her younger sister nursing an impossible crush and dabbling in politics she doesn’t understand; a young Jewish refugee hiding secrets about her family, and a conniving midwife plotting to outrun her seedy past–we come to see how the strength each finds in the choir’s collective voice reverberates in her individual life. In turns funny, charming and heart-wrenching, this lovingly executed ensemble novel will charm and inspire, illuminating the true spirit of the women on the Homefront, in a village of indomitable spirit, at the dawn of a most terrible conflict.
February 2024 Book Selection:
Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C.
- By Diane Carlson Evans
- Narrator: Janet Metzger
- Total Time: 9:40:48
- DB 115959
What is the price of honor? It took 10 years for Vietnam War nurse Diane Carlson Evans to answer that question. And the answer was a heavy one… (The entire description by the publisher is quite lengthy and available at the beginning of downloaded book.)
January 2024 Book Selection:
All the Light We Cannot See: a novel.
- By Anthony Doer
- Narrator: Jill Fox
- Total Time: 16:03:30
- DB 79182
When Paris is invaded by the Nazis, Marie-Laure LeBlanc’s father evacuates her to St. Malo to stay with her great-uncle. Blind since the age of six, Marie-Laure must learn the town by the scale model her father has left. Then, the Germans arrive. December 2023 Book Club Selection: Title: Wrong place wrong time
- Book Number: DB 110043
- Author: McAllister, Gillian
- Reading Time: 10 hours, 10 minutes
Summary: “Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened? Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s past curfew. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed. You won’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody, his future shattered. That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake and it is yesterday. And then you wake up again . and it is the day before yesterday. Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer.
The trigger for this crime and you don’t have a choice but to find it. The Book Selection for November 2023: The book is to be discussed on Thursday, November 16, and
- · DB109007
- · Author: Elin Hildebrand
- · Reading Time: 13 hours 48 minutes This book has it all – mystery, intrigue, and a touch of romance.
Fresh off a bad breakup with a longtime boyfriend, Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton is desperately seeking a second act. When she’s named the new general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, a once Gilded Age gem turned abandoned eyesore, she hopes her local expertise and charismatic staff can win the favor of their new London billionaire owner.
October 2023 Book Information:
Tuesdays with Morrie
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- Author – Mitch Albom
- DB 44849
- Tuesdays With Morrie is a memoir by Mitch Albomin which he recounts the fourteen Tuesdays he spent with his friend and mentor, Morrie Schwartz, prior to Morrie’s death.
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End of September 2023 Book Selection: George Orwell’s classic, “Animal Farm”:
- DB 38959
- Reading Time 3 hrs. 32 mins.
Originally intended as an allegorical political satire of communism in which the animals on a farm overthrow their master and live a utopian life until the intelligent pigs take over and one establishes himself as dictator. Some questions to reflect on for our discussion:
- What other cases exist or have existed where similar situations have occurred since the book was written in 1946?
September 2023
- The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
- DB113965
August 2023 Book Selection Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
- DB103778
- Science Fiction
- 16 hours 12 minutes
June 2023
- Last Call at the Nightingale
- Author: Katherine Schellman
- Narrator: Sara Young
- DB 108941
- Total time: 9:13
- New York. 1924. Vivian Kelly’s days are filled with drudgery, from the tenement lodging she shares with her sister to the dress shop where she sews for hours every day. But at night she escapes to The Nightingale, an underground dance hall where illegal liquor flows and the band plays the Charleston with reckless excitement.
- Murder Mystery
- Historical Fiction
MAY 2023
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- West with Giraffes
- by Lynda Rutledge
- Historical FictionDB102687
March 2023
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- Guiding Emily: a tale of love, loss, and courage by Barbara Hinske.
- It can be found at NLS/Talking Books/BARD # DB109068
- Listening time 7 hours 47 minutes
- recent author interview available at with our friends at Writing Works Wonders, episode 84
February 2023: Feb. 2 and 3
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- “A Man Called Ova” by Fredrik Backman
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB84392
- Listening time 9 hours, 7 minutes
January 2023: Jan. 5 and 6
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- “An Untamed Land” by Lauraine Snelling
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB67616
- Listening time 13 hours, 38 minutes
December 2022
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- “Finding Gobi: A Little dog with a very big heart” by Dion Leonard & Craig Borlase
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB89278
- Listening time 6 hours, 39 minutes
November 2022
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- “The Lightkeeper’s Daughters” by Jean Pendziwol
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB108915
- Listening time 9 hours, 51 minutes
October 2022
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- “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett.
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB99791
- Listening time 11 hours, 36 minutes
September 2022
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- “Deep Dish” by Mary Kay Andrews.
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB72492
- Listening time 11 hours, 39 minutes
August 2022
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- “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist” byJudith Heumann and Kristen Joiner (Judy be the speaker at the 2022 ACB Convention Banquet)
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB100399
- Listening time 6 hours, 40 minutes
July 2022 – No book as first week is ACB Convention
June 2022
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- “The Tour” by Jean Grainger
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB104271
- Listening time 9 hours, 58 minutes
May 2022
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- “Once upon a town” byBob Greene
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB54433
- Reading time 6 hours.
April 2022
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- “The Rosie Project” by Graeme C. Simson
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB78150
March 2022
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- “A Better Man” by Louise Penny
- It may be found on NLS BARD at DB96139
What Can You Expect on these Zoom Calls? A friendly, welcoming group, dynamic discussion, interesting questions, and a fun time with other readers who enjoy talking about books! As a CCLVI sponsored event, the CCLVI Code of Conduct guides our Zoom calls. In a nutshell, we want to promote uplifting interactions, demonstrate respect for everyone, and enjoy the conversation! If you’re interested in the CCLVI Code of Conduct, you may review it here, https://cclvi.info/about-cclvi/code-of-conduct/.
Accessing Books through NLS BARD
- National Library Service of the Library of Congress serves the blind and print disabled., it is also known as Talking Books. If you have permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical, perceptual, or reading disability that prevents you from using regular print materials, you may be eligible for services. Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS circulates books and magazines in braille or audio formats, that are instantly downloadable to a personal device or delivered by mail free of charge. https://www.loc.gov/nls/
- Online audiobooks and Braille display books from NLS’s BARD – Download your audiobooks or Braille display books to your smart phone, tablet or computer. Take them with you and enjoy. Learn more about BARD: Yes, it’s free for qualified individuals through the NLS and the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/nls/braille-audio-reading-materials/bard-access/welcome-to-bard/.
- Find and contact your NLS Regional Library. They will help you through the process with BARD.
- Phone, 888-657-7323 [888- NLS-READ]
- Weblink, Find your local Library for the Blind https://www.loc.gov/nls/braille-audio-reading-materials/find-a-local-library/
BARD Video Resources Check Youtube for video tutorials about BARD for different- devices.
- Here is one video from NLS,https;//youtu.be/kefFWy-ObU0