Kona Stories to Host 3 Book Club Meetings in November

Courtesy photo.

Kona Stories community bookstore will host three book club meetings in November to discuss works of fiction, classic and non-fiction.

Book groups are free to attend if featured books are purchased from Kona Stories. Otherwise, a $5 donation is requested. Attendees should bring a pūpū or beverage to share and come prepared to discuss selected works.

People may attend more than one book club meeting. For more information, call (808) 324-0350 or visit www.konastories.com.

The November book club meetings are as follows:

Tuesday, Nov. 13, at 6 p.m. — Fiction Group is discussing Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport

Kiana Davenport has written a major contribution to the literature of the Pacific Rim—a great reading experience both brilliantly contemporary in its form and timeless in its illumination.

Shark Dialogues opens with a fateful meeting between a 19-century Yankee sailor and the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chief and sweeps over 150 years of turbulent Hawaiian history. The novel explores in depth the rich heritage and conflicts of the people of the Hawaiian Islands. Told through the lens of magic and surrealism, the protagonist Pono—a pure-blooded matriarch and seer—comes to terms with the contradictions of her ancestry and the desires of her heart.

Tuesday, Nov. 20, at 6:00 p.m. — Classic Book Group is discussing Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (translated by Lydia Davis)

The award-winning, national bestseller translated by Lydia Davis, Madame Bovary is deemed of one of the world’s most celebrated novels.

Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs in an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debt, she resorts to rash actions with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. In this landmark new translation of Gustave Flaubert’s masterwork, award-winning writer and translator Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of Flaubert’s legendary prose style, giving new life in English to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.

Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 6 p.m. — Non-Fiction Book Club is discussing Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon is a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Award finalist that recounts one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

The book tells the story of the richest people per capita in the world, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.