September Book Club Meetings Announced

Courtesy photo.

Kona Stories Bookstore will host its monthly book club meetings in September featuring works of fiction, travel, memoir, classics and nonfiction. Readers are invited to bring a pūpū or beverage to share and discuss the selected work of the month.

The fiction group will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 11, at 6 p.m.; memoir will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 6 p.m.; nonfiction will meet on Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 6 p.m. See below for details.

Groups are free to attend if the selected works are purchased from Kona Stories Bookstore. Otherwise, a $5 donation is requested. Readers may attend one or all meetings.

Kona Stories is located in the Keauhou Shopping Center in Kailua-Kona in the courtyard shops on the KTA side. For more information, call Brenda or Joy at (808) 324-0350 or visit www.konastories.com.

Fiction Group: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 6 p.m.
Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

Sarah Perry is a talented young British author who recently debuted Essex Serpent, an acclaimed historical novel set in late nineteenth-century England. The story follows an intellectual young widow, a pious vicar and a mythical serpent to explore questions of science, religion, skepticism, faith, independence and love.

Synopsis: When Cora Seaborne’s brilliant, domineering husband dies, she steps into her new life as a widow with as much relief as sadness. Her marriage was not a happy one. Wedded at the age of 19, this woman of exceptional intelligence and curiosity was ill-suited for the role of a behaved wife. Seeking refuge in fresh air and open spacesa after the funeral, Cora leaves London for a visit to coastal Essex accompanied by her inquisitive and obsessive 11-year-old son, Francis, and Martha, the boy’s nanny and her fiercely protective friend.

While admiring the scenery, Cora learns of an intriguing rumor that a fearsome creature called the Essex Serpent lives in the marshes and claims human lives. After nearly 300 years, the mythical serpent is said to have returned and taken the life of a young man on New Year’s Eve. A keen amateur naturalist with no patience for religion or superstition, Cora is immediately enthralled, and certain that this magical sea beast must be a previously undiscovered species. Eager to investigate, she is introduced to local vicar William Ransome. Will, too, is suspicious of the rumors. But unlike Cora, this man of faith is convinced the rumors are caused by moral panic.

These seeming opposites soon find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart—an intense relationship that will change their lives in ways entirely unexpected.

Memoir Book Group: Tuesday, Sept. 18, 6 p.m.
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

An updated and revised edition of Anthony Bourdain’s mega-bestselling Kitchen Confidential, with new material from the original edition.

Synopsis: Almost two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before you Read This,” by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned—the now classic Kitchen Confidential—became an even bigger sensation with over one million copies in print. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—this time with never-before-published material.

Nonfiction Group: Tuesday, Sept. 25, 6 p.m.
SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

SPQR—short for Senatus Populusque Romanus or “the Senate and People of Rome”—is a new look at Roman history from one of the world’s foremost classicists exploring how Rome grew to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, and how the Romans thought of themselves. Covering 1,000 years of history and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome.