Manderino Library Book Club--March Selection

"At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam." Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel, p. 1.
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"There is one simple experiment which proves the readiness with which the bees will recognize their queen, and the depth of the attachment they bear her. Remove her from the hive, and there will soon be manifest all the phenomena of anguish and distress…. Replace her, a few hours later, and all her daughters will hasten toward her, offering honey. One section will form a lane, for her to pass through; others, with head bent low and abdomen high in the air, will describe before her great semicircles throbbing with sound; hymning, doubtless, the chant of welcome their rites dictate for moments of supreme happiness or solemn respect." Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee, p.104.
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The next meetings of the Manderino Library Book Club will be on Tuesday, March 21, 2006. The afternoon and evening groups will meet in library classroom #208. The afternoon group meets at 3:30 p.m. and the evening group meets at 7:00 p.m.

We will be discussing Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel and Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the Bee. William Meloy, a Cal U librarian, will be the discussion leader for both groups.

Questions? Give me a call or send me an e-mail message.

Marsha L. Nolf

Public Services Coordinator/Associate Professor
Louis L. Manderino Library
California University of Pennsylvania
250 University Avenue
California, PA 15419
724.938.4048
nolf@cup.edu