The Third-Thursday Book Discussion Group’s November selection is Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Good Earth. The 1931 novel is a heartfelt look at the life of Chinese farmer Wang Lung and his family’s struggle to live off the land in early twentieth-century China. The novel outlines not only Lung’s passion for acquiring and working his land amid famine and other hardships, but it gives readers a revealing look at Chinese ideas about family, women, marriage, religion, and class relations.

Libraries for many years have crossed local boundaries and shared resources through cooperative lending agreements with other libraries. Royal Oak Public Library is part of a library cooperative, The Library Network (TLN), which includes 65 libraries in four counties of southeastern Michigan. When you place a hold for a book from our eLibrary shared catalog, the book may arrive here from Oakland, Wayne, Livingston, or Washtenaw County, delivered by the TLN trucks that make daily delivery runs. If you cannot find a book within TLN, the MelCat system allows you to request interloans from libraries all over Michigan. When you visit other libraries in TLN, your ROPL card is honored by those libraries. By sharing our resources, we can connect our card holders to more materials than one single library can afford to purchase and house.

All books about loss and grieving are not created equal. Some are moving and heartbreaking, some are beautiful, some are humorous and wonderful, some are harsh and unforgiving, and some are all of the above. Jandy Nelson’s young adult novel, The Sky is Everywhere is one of those rare novels that manages to capture the spectrum of emotions.

Back with his eighth Detective Erlendur novel, his sixth to be translated into English, Indriðason is at his best. Hypothermia is not a traditional murder mystery, but it is definitely a mystery.