Wednesday, July 1 / Noon - 1 p.m.

What Are You Reading? book chat. Join us to chat about favorite reads, books that changed our lives, or the book we just couldn’t put down.  No need to make reservations--just come and enjoy a little conversation about books.  Carol Lynch will facilitate the discussion.

 

Saturday, July 4

The Bookworm will be closed for Independence Day.

 

Wednesday, July 8 / 6 p.m.

Meeting for those interested in traveling to Spain this fall.  For more information call Janet Grojean at 334-0722 or Karen See at 689-7604.

 

Wednesday, July 15 / 10 a.m.

Ooh-La-La.  Put on your pearls, girls.  You are cordially invited to a soirée. (Soirée is French for party.  Everything is fancier in French). Join us for aFancy Nancy Party with Omaha’s own Fancy Nancy Rips.  Remember to dress in your fanciest clothes.  Tiaras are welcome.  All Fancy Nancy books sold will benefit Omaha’s Literacy Council.

 

Thursday, July 16 / 6:30 p.m.

The As the Worm Turns Book Discussion Group will discuss The Untouchable by John Banville (Vintage, $13.95).  Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen, has been unmasked as a Russian agent.  As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe.  Lee Myer will facilitate the discussion.  Space is limited, so please call to reserve your place.

 

Saturday, July 18 / 1 p.m

Julie Kramer will sign Missing Mark (Doubleday, $25).  The groom, Mark, last seen at the rehearsal dinner, never showed up for the wedding, humiliating his bride, Madeline, in front of 300 guests. His mother, eager to spare him further embarrassment, waited weeks before filing a missing-person report. TV reporter Riley Spartz pursues this curious story of a bride left at the altar and finds herself caught in a dangerous case. Riley discovers a startling motive for Mark's disappearance, and a TV exclusive guaranteed to win the ratings . . . if she lives to report it.

 

Monday, July 27 / 2 p.m.

The World War II History Book Discussion Group will discussRetribution: The Battle for Japan by Max Hastings (Vintage, $17.95).  By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained unclear.  The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan’s utter devastation—was acted out across the vast theater of Asia in massive clashes between army, air and naval forces.  Ruth Heer will lead the discussion.

 

Monday, July 27 / 6:30 p.m. 

The Bookworm's Jane Austen Classics Book Club will discuss two Edith Wharton classics.  The House of Mirth (Penguin, $11) is a black comedy about vast wealth and a woman who can define herself only through the perceptions of others. Lily Bart's quest to find a husband who can satisfy her cravings for endless admiration and all the trappings of the rich comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being a wealthy man's mistress. The Age of Innocence (Penguin, $11) is Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic novel of passion and desire. The beautiful Countess Ellen Olenska, fleeing her brutish husband, returns from Europe to the upper-class world of Old New York in the 1870s. Her rebellious independence and impulsive awareness of life stir the educated sensitivity of Newland Archer, already engaged to marry Ellen's cousin.  Ruth Heer will lead the discussion.

 

Thursday, July 30 / 6 p.m.

Julie & Julia, a film based on two true stories, arrives in theaters in August.  We invite you to join us in a special Julie/Julia book discussion, and a night out to see the movie on August 19.  Read one or all of the following titles:  Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Back Bay, $14.99).  Powell needs something to break the monotony of her life. So, she invents a deranged assignment: she will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and cook all 524 recipes in the span of just one year.  My Life in France by Julia Child (Anchor, $15). Exuberant, affectionate, and boundlessly charming, this is the delightful and highly acclaimed memoir from the woman who revolutionized American cooking in the 20th century.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child (Knopf, $30)  The only cookbook that explains how to create authentic French dishes in American kitchens with American foods, teaching the key techniques of French cooking, and permitting many variations on a theme. Carol Lynch and Janet Grojean will facilitate the discussion.  Space is limited, so please call to reserve your place.

 

Wednesday, August 5 / Noon - 1 p.m.

What Are You Reading? book chat. Join us to chat about favorite reads, books that changed our lives, or the book we just couldn’t put down.  No need to make reservations--just come and enjoy a little conversation about books.  Carol Lynch will facilitate the discussion.

 

Sunday, August 9 / 2 p.m.

Teatime!  Join Ellen Scott and Janet Grojean for a relaxing afternoon as they savor a relaxing cup of tea. $7, and please call to reserve your spot.  Don’t forget to bring your favorite teacup.  The featured book will be Tea Wisdom: Inspirational Quotes and Quips about the World's Most Celebrated Beverage by Aaron Fisher (Tuttle, $15.95).  Tea Wisdom is a wonderful collection of tea quotes, drawn from different centuries and parts of the world, celebrating the ability of tea to calm the nerves, enliven the mind and strengthen the spirit. Covering the full range of a tea lover's appreciation for this most celebrated of beverages, Tea Wisdom makes for a lovely treat.

 

Wednesday, August 19 / 5:30 p.m.

Meet at The Bookworm for a “sip and dip” before going to the Rave Movie Theater in Westroads to see Julie and Julia. The movie intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.  Bring your spouse, your friend, your cooking partner.  Call 392-2877 for reservations.

 

Thursday, August 20 / 6:30 p.m.

The As the Worm Turns Book Discussion Group will discuss The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial, $14).  January 1946: London is emerging from the Second World War, and Juliet Ashton begins corresponding with members of a group on the island of Guernsey. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island, boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters.  Juliet learns about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.  Priscilla Wheeler will lead the discussion.  Space is limited, so please call to reserve your place.

 

Monday, August 24 / 2 p.m.

The World War II History Book Discussion Group will discuss Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester (Back Bay, $16.99).  One of the most celebrated historians of our time looks back at his own early life and gives us a remarkable account of World War II in the Pacific, of what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and, most of all, what it felt like to one who underwent all but the ultimate of its experiences.  Ruth Heer will lead the discussion.

 

Monday, August 24 / 6:30 p.m.

The Bookworm's Jane Austen Classics Book Club will discuss two classics by E. M. Forster.  A Room with a View (Penguin, $9.95) portrays the love of a British woman for an expatriate living in Italy. Lucy Honeychurch finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected boor. However Lucy takes control of her own fate and finds love with a man whose free spirit reminds her of "a room with a view." Howards End (Penguin, $11) is the story of the disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist--all intersecting at an estate called Howards End. Ruth Heer will lead the discussion.

 

Saturday, August 29 / 1 p.m.

Steve Langan will sign Meet Me at the Happy Bar (BlazeVox, $16).  “What am I listening for?” Steve Langan writes. “The lyric of damages, with slivers of lightning.” But he is very aware of himself as a maker of poems, and of poems as forms of inherited, though not necessarily genuine, feeling. His impulse is to interrogate the uses of language, to probe, often comically, at the consciousness of art, revealing what is essential. It’s this rejection of a received sense of value that is intriguing about his work, the feeling that he is trying to clarify how poems can move and act if they are to truly speak for us.