Join the Morning Coffee Book Club where Scott Biegen, a PSPL Librarian (and English Teacher in a previous life), leads a book club at the Welwood Murray Memorial Library.

The group meets the 3rd Wednesday of the month from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. (September through May). The Morning Coffee Book Club meets in person in the Cornelia White Community Room at the Welwood Murray Memorial Library in downtown Palm Springs. Coffee and muffins are graciously provided by Aspen Mills.

To receive meeting information and/or join the email list for the Morning Coffee Book Club, please email Scott Biegen in advance of the meeting.

Most titles are available as Downloadable Audiobooks and/or eBooks from PSPL.

December 16, 2026

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

—Winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.

Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world"—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Anyone who requires an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication, or a modification of policies or procedures to participate in a program, service, or activity of the City of Palm Springs, should contact the ADA Coordinator, as soon as possible but no later than 48 hours before the scheduled event.