“The Sympathizer” Book Discussion

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FREE BOOK DISCUSSION: The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen with The Community Library’s Jenny Emery Davidson & Scott Burton

FREE, pre-registration through The Sun Valley Center recommended to reserve your seat.

Join Jenny Emery Davidson and Scott Burton from The Community Library as they discuss The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a “man of two minds,” a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon. He, while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles, secretly reports back to his communist superiors in Vietnam. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

“Streetcar: From Play to Movie to Opera” by Mark Junkert

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Opera Idaho General Director Mark Junkert will follow Tennessee Williams’ 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play as it becomes a movie in 1951 and then in 1995 an opera by Andre Previn, which Opera Idaho will perform in Boise on April 6 and 8 at the Egyptian Theater.

“The Way We Live Now Remix: The Metaphors of Extinction” by John Rember

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Local writer John Rember reads from his recently completed work, 100 Little Pieces on the End of the World.  The book is a series of meditations on late capitalist culture that add up to a forgiving—if dark—assessment of the human future.

John Rember is a fourth-generation Idahoan. Recurring themes in his writing include the meaning of place, the impact of tourism on the West, and the weirdness of everyday life.

His latest short story collection is Sudden Death, Over Time. John’s memoir Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley was named the 2003 Idaho Book of the Year by the Idaho Library Association. He has two other collections of short stories, Cheerleaders from Gomorrah: Tales from the Lycra Archipelago and Coyote in the Mountains, as well as numerous articles and columns in magazines and newspapers, including Travel and Leisure, Wildlife Conservation, High Desert Journal, The Huffington Post, and Skiing Magazine. 

He was a professor of writing for many years, and a core faculty member at the Pacific University MFA program  (Forest Grove, Oregon).  From 2004 to 2014, he was Writer-at-Large at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.

John lives in the Sawtooth Valley of Central Idaho.

Tech Class with Paul: Password Management

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Passwords can be frustrating. There is a better way to manage your passwords. In this class, we will review some traditional methods and unveil some new ones. Come and spend some time getting a handle on your passwords.

Race and Identity in American Literature: A Book Discussion Series

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As we anticipate the March 8 lecture by prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen in Ketchum, co-sponsored by The Community Library and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, we will explore his novel and two other seminal American novels from the second half of the 20th century. The reading list is constructed by recommendations from Nguyen, who also is a professor of American Studies (see the interview with him in The New York Times Book Review from January 30, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/books/review/viet-thanh-nguyen-by-the-book.html). We will begin with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, then read Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, and conclude with Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. The discussions will be moderated by Jenny Emery Davidson, the Library’s executive director.

1 – January 31: Introduction and Invisible Man

We’ll have a general introduction to the three books, and then we’ll get started with the novel Invisible Man by discussing the prologue and chapters 1-3 (approximately the first 100 pages).

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