Books & Brew 2027 Chillicothe Public Library's eclectic book club for adults meets at 6:30 pm on third Tuesdays. If you are a regular attendee or interested in attending, your feedback is appreciated as we start planning for next year. Please complete your response by November 21. Thank you! Question Title * 1. Help us choose our books for 2027! Please select your top 10 choices from the following. (Click on the hyperlinked titles for more info about each book.) (Required.) Underland: A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane - An epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time—from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come—Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. When the Moon Hits Your Eye, by John Scalzi - The moon has turned into cheese. Now humanity has to deal with it. Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and terminal patients—each get their moment to panic, to plan, to wonder and to pray, to laugh and to grieve. All in a kaleidoscopic, humorous novel that goes all the places you’d expect, and then to so many places you wouldn’t. Tenth of December, by George Saunders - This collection about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. The stories explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human. The Feather Wars and the Great Crusade to Save America’s Birds, by James H. McCommons - The extinction of the passenger pigeon catalyzed a widespread battle to save the birds of America and their habitat. The Feather Wars is an entertaining and expansive story about the heroes, martyrs, villains, and conflicted do-gooders of the early bird conservation movement who came together to save hundreds of species of birds and transform American perspectives. A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold - The environmental classic that redefined the way we think about the natural world presents an urgent and still-timely call for preservation, through astonishing portraits of the natural world and the breathtaking diversity of the American landscape. Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains, by Lucas Bessire - The Ogallala aquifer has nourished the American Great Plains for millennia, but less than a century of unsustainable irrigation has taxed much of the aquifer beyond repair. Bessire, whose family were irrigation farmers for five generations, offers a uniquely personal account of aquifer depletion, what it means to inherit the legacies of the past, and how we can take responsibility for a more inclusive, sustainable future. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton - An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong… and science proves a dangerous toy. Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury - Told in moving, interconnected vignettes, Dandelion Wine describes the summer of 1928 in a small Illinois town and the experiences and epiphanies of 12-year-old Douglas. Everyday happenings and marvels are limned with the energy, wonder, fears, and yearnings of youth on the cusp of growing up. Vigil, by George Saunders - Not for the first time, Jill finds herself hurtling toward earth and yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife. But when she lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion, he will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. Vigil careens through the wild final evening of a complicated man, as visitors, worldly and otherwise, begin to arrive, clamoring for a reckoning. Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, by Judy Heumann and Kristen Joiner - Paralyzed from polio at 18 months, Judy began her struggle for equality early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. This candid, intimate, and irreverent, memoir invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong. The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World, by Sarah Stewart Johnson - Mars was once similar to Earth, but today, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. Yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science. Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders - With the Civil War less than one year old, President Lincoln’s beloved 11-year-old son dies, and a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt alone to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth sprouts a story that breaks free of its realistic framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm, deploying a panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end? Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab, by Steve Inskeep - Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy, foreshadowed later events like the Civil War, and defined the political culture for much that followed. This heart-stopping narrative is a tragedy of American history that feels ripped from the headlines in its immediacy, drama, and relevance to our lives. Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty - If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father? This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings, former tennis stars and now successful adults. With differing opinions on the guilt of their father, who claims innocence but seems to be hiding something, they square off to reexamine their family history in a new light. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, by Michael Pollan - The fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life, and demonstrating how we might use awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves. Providence, by Max Barry - Seven years after first contact, Providence Five launches. The enormous and deadly warship’s crew of four are tasked with monitoring the ship and reporting the war’s progress to a mesmerized global audience. But when their communications are cut and their ship is decreasingly trustworthy and effective, they must engage in their own terrifying fight for survival. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612940/providence-by-max-barry/ Question Title * 2. A little bit about you... I regularly attend Books & Brew. I plan to attend Books & Brew in 2027. I would like to attend, but the day/time doesn't work for me. I would like to attend, but I prefer to meet in a setting other than the library. Other (please specify your interest in a library book club) Question Title * 3. What would be your ideal time and day to attend a book club? Question Title * 4. What would be your ideal book club meeting location? Question Title * 5. What kind of books are you interested in reading and discussing in a book club? (Check all that apply.) Short Stories Romance Mysteries Science Fiction Fiction Poetry Funny books Short books "Classics" Thrillers Long books Non-fiction (true stories) Historical fiction Young Adult/Teen books Fantasy Children's books Other (please specify) Done