Short Reads Book Club: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Location
This event is online only.
Don’t have time? Don’t worry. The Short Reads Book Club – a bi-monthly discussion group focusing on novels that are quick to read – understands your time is precious.
But that doesn’t mean our selections won’t be chock full of literary vitamins and minerals, nor will they be dry intellectual exercises devoid of joy and humor. No! Every other month we will meet and discuss a beautiful little slab of goodness, books both old and new, that stimulate all the pleasure centers of an adventurous reader’s brain.
How does it work? Register for the online event at the top of this page. After registration, a Google Hangouts/Meetup link will be sent via email before the event takes place, so make sure you include your email when registering.
After signing up, read the book! We encourage you, of course, to borrow the book from The New York Public Library. Copies will be made available at the 53rd Street Library, but they're also available at other NYPL locations across the library system. These books will also be available digitally, both as ebooks and audiobooks, using the app of your choice.
**This month's Short Reads Book Club selection is The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Find a copy HERE.**
Book description: When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.
Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. He lives in New York City.