The Altadena Library District is hosting a “No Guilt Book Club” in person on Tuesday, June 14, starting at 7 p.m.
The group will gather and discuss “The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World,” by Laura Imai Messina, and “Don’t Make Me Pull Over: An Information History of the Family Road Trip,” written by Richard Ratay.
“The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World” is an international bestselling novel sold in 21 countries, about grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami.
When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain. Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around. Soon Yui makes her own pilgrimage to the phone booth, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Instead, she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of her mother’s death.
“Don’t Make Me Pull Over: An Information History of the Family Road Trip” offers a nostalgic look at the golden age of family road trips – before the age of portable DVD players, smartphones, and Google Maps.
In the book, Ratay offers “an amiable guide… fun and informative,” according to the New York Newsday, that “goes down like a cold lemonade on a hot summer’s day,” according to The Wall Street Journal. In hundreds of amusing ways, Ratay reminds the reader of what once made the Great American Family Road Trip so great, including 20-foot “land yachts,” oasis-like Holiday Inn “Holidomes,” “Smokey”-spotting Fuzzbusters, twenty-eight glorious flavors of Howard Johnson’s ice cream, and the thrill of finding a “good buddy” on the CB radio.
Tuesday’s No Guilt Book Club is free to attend.
For more information, call (626) 798-0833 or visit www.altadenalibrary.org/
The Altadena Main Library is at 600 E. Mariposa Street in Altadena.
