In this issue: Harry Potter, book club reports, and book groups!
Joy & Brenda with AdvoCATS co-president Cathy Swedelius
A big Mahalo to everyone who has donated to ADVOCats, in Shadow's memory.  Total donations to date of almost $800 will help them continue their excellent work dedicated to the well-being of Hawaii Island's homeless cat population. They support the Trap-Neuter-Return program as the humane way to reduce the number of unwanted cats and prevent the spread of feline diseases.
Over the last 17 years, they have spayed and neutered over 18,000 cats!

Attention all Wizards, Witches, and Muggles! 
It's Harry Potter Day: Saturday, July 30th
Get your wands at the ready and join us in celebrating the release of the highly anticipated "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child".

From Noon to 2pm we will have a variety of magical surprises and games!  
We have even gotten permission to borrow the Sorting Hat!
All day: refreshments and crafts and you can say what the Harry Potter books mean to you on a special poster we will have hanging up! 

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
We can't wait to celebrate!
Come in costume and you can enter to win a Hardcover Illustrated edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Pre-paid for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" and get $10 off the list price.    ks@konastories.com
"Second Tuesday"
Come to a Book Group.
Our groups are fun and easy. It's even OK if you don't finish the book. Pick a genre: fiction, non-fiction or travel; bring a light pupu or beverage, and enjoy!  
Our Travel and Adventure group: July 19 @6:30pm
West with the Night 
West with the Night , by Beryl Markham is our next book. If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure. She grew up in Kenya with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors. She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane. And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic. Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty. 
"Just the Facts"- Our nonfiction group: July 26 @6:30pm
Twelve Caesars
 We are learning about The Twelve Caesars:The Dramatic Lives of the Emperors of Rome. This is Matthew Dennison's unforgettable depiction of the Roman empire at the height of its power and reach, and an elegantly sensational retelling of the lives and times of the twelve Caesars, one of the them was a military genius, one murdered his mother and fiddled while Rome burned, and another earned the nickname "sphincter artist." Six of their number was assassinated, two committed suicide, and five of them were elevated to the status of gods.  
"Second Tuesday"- Our fiction group: August, 9 @6:30pm
Avenue of Mysteries
  John Irving's Avenue of Mysteries is next for our fiction group. Juan Diego-- a fourteen-year-old boy, who was born and grew up in Mexico -- has a thirteen-year-old sister. Her name is Lupe, and she thinks she sees what's coming -- specifically, her own future and her brother's. Regarding what has happened, as opposed to what will, Lupe is usually right about the past; without your telling her, she knows all the worst things that have happened to you... As an older man, Juan Diego will take a trip to the Philippines, ... where what happened to him in the past -- in Mexico -- collides with his future. 
Not front page news, but still news: "Senate Confirms Carla Hayden as 14th Librarian of Congress".

Readers.comblog brings us "The Most Feared Books of All Time". It's interesting how this changes over time.

The Guardian has selected "The Top 10 grandmothers in fiction" as well as "The Top 10 books about the Iraq war".

Last, Vulture gives us "The 100 Greatest Beach Books of all Time". Many of these books, I don't know that I'd classify as 'beach books', but they define them as "a beach read needs narrative momentum, a transporting sense of place, and, ideally, a touch of the sordid. Even a book that takes a little work shouldn't feel that way in the hot sun..."

Aloha and a hui hou,
Brenda and Joy, owners
Noble, cat