Events › Albany Library's Saturday Afternoon Book Club

We welcome you to Albany Library’s monthly book club discussion. The club meets every third Sunday to discuss select reading materials. Materials selected for reading and discussion are to be determined by the whole club. The group is open to adults as well as teens, and the number of participants is 12. Please consider joining us for this event.                                                                 

Pick of the Month:

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

(Source: Goodreads.)

Seating: First Come Serve Basis.

Cost: All AC Library events are free.

Other: Light refreshments served at the event.

Event Sponsors: The Friends of the Albany Library and Alameda County Library.

Library staff may take photos, videos, or audio recordings at our events. Please tell us if you do not wish to be photographed, video-recorded, or audio-recorded. We will always respect your requests!

An ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter or closed captioning can be provided for this program if requested at least seven (7) days in advance. For assistance, please contact your library or accessibility@aclibrary.org.