2018 Summer Reading Program

Thank you for your support of our Summer Reading Program!

 

Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong

American Gods, Neil Gaiman

Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Girl in His Shadow, Audrey Blake

A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik

The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak

Nightcrawling, Leila Mottley

Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney

I’ll See You in Paris, Michelle Gable

When I Sing, Mountains Dance, Irene Sola

…because Summer Reading isn’t just for kids!

One Series to Rule Them All: A Three Part Lord of the Rings Book Club

Thursday, June 28 @ 6:30PM: “The Fellowship of the Ring”
Thursday, July 26 @ 6:30PM: “The Two Towers”
Thursday, August 30 @ 6:30PM: “Return of the King”

Pack some lembas bread, and join us in Middle Earth…err the LPL Courtyard this summer!

Opioid Epidemic: A Three Part Series

Addiction: A Disease of the Mind and Body
Monday, July 30 | 5:30pm | Bates Auditorium

How to Help a Loved One Struggling with Drug Use
Thursday, August 23 | 5:30pm | Bates Auditorium

How to Talk to Children about Drugs
Thursday, September 27 | 5:30pm | Bates Auditorium

 

Get out your fedora, trench coat, and magnifying glass! Each Saturday in August, we’ll trace the evolution of American Crime Cinema through noteworthy and award-winning films emblematic of key genre movements. Hosted by Chris Wagenseller of Central Penn College.

1:00 Film Introduction * 1:30 Showtime
Film Discussion to Immediately Follow 

August 4
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941)
Based on Dashiell Hammett’s widely-acclaimed 1930 novel of the same name, John Huston’s first feature set the template for the hardboiled screen detective and made Humphrey Bogart a bonafide film star. In addition to previewing the film and series, we’ll examine how the film offers the first onscreen success of the ‘double game’, wherein the audience and the sleuth compete to solve the case first.

August 11
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)
“I’m a student of violence because I’m a student of the human heart,” Sam Peckinpah once claimed, and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia most directly demonstrates the questionable choices borne from the darker impulses of the heart more than any other film on our list. We’ll discuss how the movie also serves as a crossover point between the western and the noir as the commercial cinema battle was being won by the latter.

August 18
Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)
Film noir is a genre told almost exclusively from a male perspective, which we’ll briefly examine before watching one if its most seductive entries, Body Heat. Centering on a listless Florida attorney’s infatuation with a Femme Fatale who owes her narrative and performative lineage to the earliest human storytelling — and certainly the screen sirens who preceded her — this conspicuously self-aware film is evocative of earlier classic please-kill-my-husband flicks like DoubleIndemnity and The Postman Always RingsTwice whilst firmly placing the locus of power within the female lead, where it of course always belonged.

August 25
Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005)
The first feature from Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson, Brick is a postmodern take on crime cinema: though built in the mold of crooks, dames, heavies, and private eyes of classic 1940s noir, the characters are all teenagers, and the bulk of the action – replete with murder, drugs, and sin – takes place in and around the high school they never appear to attend. We’ll discuss how the disruption of characters and setting influences how we receive the story, as well as attempt to identify its pastiche of influences.

Thank you for supporting our Summer Reading Programs at the Lancaster Public Library this summer! We hope you had a great time!

Check out the calendar for information on events happening at the Lancaster City Branch this fall.

 

Thank you for supporting our Summer Reading Programs at the Leola Branch this summer! We hope you had a great time!

Check out the calendar for information on events happening at the Leola Branch this fall.

Thank you for supporting our Summer Reading Programs at the Mountville Branch this summer! We hope you had a great time!

Check out the calendar for information on events happening at the Mountville Branch this fall.