The MDI Historical Society Book Club will be partnering with the Jesup Memorial Library for a virtual gathering on Monday, December 5, at 6 pm on Zoom.

The book selected for December is “Love in Idleness” (a romance novella set in Bar Harbor) by Francis Marion Crawford. If you would like to attend please follow this link: https://mdihistory.org/book-club.

F. Marion Crawford was an American born in Italy, a prolific writer, invited to mingle in the highest social circles, authoring both a fictional piece about Bar Harbor (Love in Idleness, 1894) and a non-fiction guide to the area (also in 1894).

Book Club is an online community gathering to discuss books by MDI authors or with local settings, using literature as an entry-point to regional history. The Society provides MDI-specific historical context to bring the novels to life, such as sharing relevant artifacts from the collection, sound bites from oral histories, and photographs or slides of the book’s people and places. Book Club also includes traditional discussions around themes, characters, and plot, and readers are encouraged to share their reactions and ask questions of the groups’ collective knowledge. 

Finishing the novel isn’t required to attend meetings; we welcome readers whether they’re on page 12, 200, have finished the book, or haven’t had a chance.