Spring 2025: Creativity
Creating the perfect surprise vacation for a loved one, painting a room so it becomes a light and bright space, teaching a reluctant reader to find joy between the pages of a book, designing a garden, building a bookcase for a difficult corner; these are just some examples of how all of us use creativity in our daily lives. Those who become famous for their creativity may paint the Sistine Chapel, discover cures for cancer, write the great American novel or sing in a way that brings tears to our eyes.
Copies of all books will be available in the library. Registration is highly encouraged. Click on the blue hyperlinks for each date to register. If you do not register, you will not receive the link for the discussion.
This Spring, we will encounter creative people and characters whose creativity changes their world and ours.
On Thursday, April 24 at 10:30 on Zoom, author Emily Franklin will join us in a conversation about her astounding, critically acclaimed work of historical fiction, The Lioness of Boston. The creative, feminist, trailblazing, notorious Isabella Stewart Gardener is the focus of this compelling, beautifully written book. Set at the turn of the twentieth century, The Lioness of Boston provides readers with deep insights into the lives of upper-class urban women during that time. Shoved into the back row by society matrons, Isabella Stewart Gardener transcends the confines of the life of a society lady, traveling the world to collect important and revelatory works of art. Her home is transformed into a public and free museum that exists to this day to transport ordinary Bostonians, as well as tourists, to a place of beauty and imagination. Sadly, missing from this collection are 13 important paintings stolen in the infamous art heist of 1990.
On Thursday, June 12 at 10:30 in the MPL Program Room, Will Speers will discuss Kiese Laymon’s astonishing book, Heavy: An American Memoir, voted one of the best books of the year by the New York Times, NPR, and many other sources. Written in 2018, this author lays bare his life of racism, books, violence, writing, gambling, compulsivity, bulimia, and family love. Growing up with an aggressively intellectual single mother, Layman is raised with a steady stream of writing, rewriting and revising assignments. He is raised to be excellent and excellent he is, along with bulimic and angry and lonely. You have never read anything quite like this book. We look forward to revelatory insights into this complicated work from Mr. Speers whose carefully researched presentations always enlighten us.
On Thursday, July 31 at 10:30 in the MPL Program Room, Dr. Suzanne Brown will discuss The Woman Who Smashed Codes: The Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone. Our 2024-2025 literary series began with Hidden Figures, the incredible story of the Black women mathematicians who were extremely important players in America’s race to space, including the famous moon landing. Dr. Brown led that dynamic discussion, and she will return to share another of her favorite page-turners focusing on a hidden American heroine. Elizabeth Smith Friedman is one of the most important cryptanalysts in the development of our country’s intelligence services. During World Wars I and II, she did pivotal work in the field of codebreaking that led to allied victories.