Bookends

2012 Book Selections

2011-12-10T15:56:00.004-07:00

January 12: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot) at Sirpa's

February 9: The Apothecary (Maile Meloy) at Tiffanie's

March 8: The Reading Promise (Alice Ozma) at Joanne's

April 19: Girl in Translation (Jean Kwok) at Charlotte's

Mary 10: To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis) by Heather at Amy's house

June 14: Lost in Shangri-La (Mitchell Zuckoff) at Rosalie's

July 12: Dressmaker of Khair Khana (Gayle Tzemach) at Jeana's

August 9: When we were Strangers (Pamela Scoenewaldt) at Collette's

September 13: Little Princes (Conor Grennan) at Shelley's

October 11: Factory Girls (Leslie Chang) at Tiffanie's

(This date my change depending on Fall Break.)

November 8: The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) at Amy's

Sirpa's Suggestions

2011-12-05T14:25:00.006-07:00

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Non-Fiction)

by Rebecca Skloot

382 pages

Synopsis: Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down,The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Unaccustomed Earth (Fiction)

by Jhumpa Lahiri

352 pages

Synopsis: Knopf Canada is proud to welcome this bestselling, Pulitzer Prize—winning author with eight dazzling stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life.

In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father who carefully tends her garden–where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a couple’s romantic getaway weekend takes a dark turn at a party that lasts deep into the night. In “Only Goodness,” a woman eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in “Hema and Kaushik,” a trio of linked stories–a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love and fate–we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one fateful winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome.

How Green Was My Valley (Fiction)

by Richard Llewellyn

448 pages

Synopsis: As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth, when South Wales still prospered and coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn's characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people.

The Faith Club (Non-Fiction)

by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, Priscilla Warner

320 pages

Synopsis: At first, it seemed like a good idea. In the wake of September 11, 2001, American Muslim Ranya Idliby contacted a Christian woman (Suzanne Oliver) and a Jewish woman (Priscilla Warner), proposing that the three of them write a children's book on the commonalities of these major religious traditions. Almost from the start, their "faith club" meetings devolved into wrangling; as one reviewer put it, "more Fight Club than book club." The three women argued with each other and also with themselves; even faith itself was brought into question. Through sheer stubbornness, the women continued their sessions, candidly tackling their own and each other's stereotypes, misconceptions, and deep beliefs. The Faith Club stands as a monument to their persistence, a testament to their faiths, and evidence of the difficulties that lay ahead.

Amy's Suggestions

2011-12-04T22:59:00.008-07:00

The Night Circus (Fiction)

by Erin Morgenstern

400 pages

Synopsis: The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is calledLe Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love--a deep magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead. Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

NOTE: Paperback available from miscellaneous sellers online or hardcover available for $16.17 at Amazon.com / $16.33 at BN.com.

The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared (Memoir)

by Alice Ozma

304 pages

Synopsis: When Alice Ozma was in 4th grade, she and her father decided to see if he could read aloud to her for 100 consecutive nights. On the hundreth night, they shared pancakes to celebrate, but it soon became evident that neither wanted to let go of their storytelling ritual. So they decided to continue what they called "The Streak." Alice's father read aloud to her every night without fail until the day she left for college.

Alice approaches her book as a series of vignettes about her relationship with her father and the life lessons learned from the books he read to her.

When We Were Strangers (Fiction)

by Pamela Schoenewaldt

336 pages

Synopsis: Too poor and too plain to marry, and unwilling to burden what family she has left, twenty-year-old Irma Vitale sees no choice but to flee her Italian mountain village. Risking rough passage across the Atlantic and the dangers facing a single woman in an unfamiliar land, Irma boldly pursues a new life sewing dresses for gentlewomen.

Swept up in the crowded streets of nineteenth-century America, Irma finds not only workshop servitude and miserable wages but also seeds of friendship in the raw immigrant quarters. When her determination to find a place for herself leads at last to a Chicago shop, Irma blossoms from the guidance of an austere Alsatian dressmaker, sewing fabrics and patterns more beautiful than she'd ever imagined.

Then tragedy strikes and her tenuous peace is shattered. From the rubble, and in the face of human cruelty and kindness, suffering and hope, Irma prevails, discovering a talent she'd never imagined and an unlikely family patched together by the common threads that unite us all.

Tiffanie's Suggestions

2011-12-04T21:24:00.009-07:00

Girl in Translation (Fiction)

by Jean Kwok

320 pages

Synopsis: When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Kapitoil (Fiction)

by Teddy Wayne

320 pages

Synopsis: "Sometimes you do not truly observe something until you study it in reverse," writes Karim Issar upon arrival to New York City from Qatar in 1999. Fluent in numbers, logic, and business jargon yet often baffled by human connection, the young financial wizard soon creates a computer program named Kapitoil that predicts oil futures and reaps record profits for his company.

At first an introspective loner adrift in New York's social scenes, he anchors himself to his legendary boss Derek Schrub and Rebecca, a disillusioned colleague who may understand him better than he does himself. Her influence, and his father's disapproval of Karim's Americanization, cause him to question the moral implications of Kapitoil, moving him toward a decision that will determine his future, his firm's, and to whom--and where--his loyalties lie.

The Apothecary (Young Adult)

by Maile Meloy

368 pages

Synopsis: It's 1952 and the Scott family has just moved from Los Angeles to London. Here, fourteen-year-old Janie meets a mysterious apothecary and his son, Benjamin Burrows - a fascinating boy who's not afraid to stand up to authority and dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father is kidnapped, Janie and Benjamin must uncover the secrets of the apothecary's sacred book, the Pharmacopoeia, in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons. Discovering and testing potions they never believed could exist, Janie and Benjamin embark on a dangerous race to save the apothecary and prevent impending disaster.

NOTE: Hardcover only ($11.58 at Amazon.com / $11.98 at BN.com).

Shelley's Suggestions

2011-12-04T19:53:00.006-07:00

Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal (Non-Fiction)

by Conor Grennan

320 pages

Synopsis: In search of adventure, 29-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal. Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war—for a huge fee—by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life’s work.

Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.  

NOTE: Paperback release scheduled for 12/27/11.

Charlotte's Suggestions

2011-12-04T18:41:00.007-07:00

The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart (Memoir)

by Brian Doyle

186 pages

Synopsis: Brian Doyle wrote an essay, which he later expanded into his book, The Wet Engine. The following is an excerpt from his original essay:

My son Liam was born ten years ago. He looked like a cucumber on steroids. He was fat and bald and round as a cucumber on steroids. He looked healthy as a horse. He wasn't. He was missing a chamber in his heart. You need four rooms in your heart for smooth conduct through this vale of fears and tears, and he only had three, so pretty soon doctors cut him open and iced down his heart and shut it down for an hour while they made repairs, and then when he was about eighteen months old he had another surgery, during which they did more tinkering, and all this slicing and dicing worked, and now he's ten, and the other day as he and I were having a burping contest he suddenly said, "Explain to me my heart stuff," which I tried to do, in my usual Boring Dad way, and soon enough he wandered off, I think to beat up his brother, but I sat there remembering.

I remember pacing hospital and house and hills, and thinking that these operations would either work or not and he would either live or die. There was a certain clarity there; I used to crawl into that clarity at night to sleep. But nothing else was clear. I used to think, in those sleepless days and nights, what if they don't fix him all the way and he's a cripple all his life, a pale thin kid in a wheelchair who has Crises? What if his brain gets bent? What if he ends up alive but without his mind at all? What then? Who would he be? Would he always be what he might have been? Would I love him still? What if I couldn't love him? What if he was so damaged that I prayed for him to die? Would those prayers be good or evil?

I don't have anything sweet or wise to say about those thoughts. I can't report that God gave me strength to face my fears, or that my wife's love saved me, or anything cool and poetic like that. I just tell you that I had those thoughts, and they haunt me still. I can't even push them across the page here and have them sit between you and me unattached to either of us, for they are bound to me always, like the dark fibers of my heart. For our hearts are not pure; our hearts are filled with need and greed as much as with love and grace; and we wrestle with our hearts all the time. The wrestling is who we are. How we wrestle is who we are. What we want to be is never what we are. Not yet. Maybe that's why we have these relentless engines in our chests, driving us forward toward what we might be.

NOTE: Currently for sale as a bargain-priced hardcover from miscellaneous sellers (not BN.com or Amazon.com directly). The paperback release is scheduled for 4/28/12.

Gilead (Fiction)

by Marilynne Robinson

247 pages

Synopsis: Gilead was published in 2004 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, amid widespread acclaim. This epistolary novel presents a sympathetic portrait of Reverend John Ames, who writes about his life and his beliefs ever mindful of the fact that he has only a short time to live. Reverend Ames takes up the task of writing in the hopes that his little boy will read this book when he is an adult and thus become acquainted with the father he may barely remember otherwise.

This novel is not divided into chapters, and the events are not presented in chronological order. Rather, in the letters to his son, the narrator describes events that transpire in the immediate present, while he is writing this journal, and he narrates old family stories as they occur to him, along with other subjects that matter to him. Certain dominant memories that span his seventy-five years in Gilead, between 1882 and 1956, are referred to repeatedly, and the narrator also tells important stories that stretch back through his father's and grandfather's lives.

Catherine the Great (Biography)

by Robert K. Massie

656 pages

Synopsis: The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history.

Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into Empress of Russia by sheer determination. Possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity as a young woman, she devoured the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, when she reached the throne, attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent historical figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the Great, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and, surprisingly, the American naval hero, John Paul Jones.

Reaching the throne fired by Enlightenment philosophy and determined to become the embodiment of the “benevolent despot” idealized by Montesquieu, she found herself always contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian life, including serfdom. She persevered, and for thirty-four years the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands. She dealt with domestic rebellion, foreign wars, and the tidal wave of political change and violence churned up by the French Revolution that swept across Europe.

The story is superbly told. All the special qualities that Robert K. Massie brought to Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great are present here: historical accuracy, depth of understanding, felicity of style, mastery of detail, ability to shatter myth, and a rare genius for finding and expressing the human drama in extraordinary lives.

History offers few stories richer in drama than that of Catherine the Great. In this book, this eternally fascinating woman is returned to life.

NOTE: Hardcover only ($19.24 from Amazon.com / $19.43 from BN.com).

Jeana's Suggestions

2011-12-04T18:30:00.007-07:00

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Fiction)

by Ransom Riggs

352 pages

Synopsis: As a kid, Jacob formed a special bond with his grandfather over his bizarre tales and photos of levitating girls and invisible boys. Now at 16, he is reeling from the old man's unexpected death. Then Jacob is given a mysterious letter that propels him on a journey to the remote Welsh island where his grandfather grew up. There, he finds the children from the photographs--alive and well--despite the islanders’ assertion that all were killed decades ago. As Jacob begins to unravel more about his grandfather’s childhood, he suspects he is being trailed by a monster only he can see. A haunting and out-of-the-ordinary read, debut author Ransom Rigg’s first-person narration is convincing and absorbing, and every detail he draws our eye to is deftly woven into an unforgettable whole. Interspersed with photos throughout, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a truly atmospheric novel with plot twists, turns, and surprises that will delight readers of any age.

NOTE: Hardcover only ($9.44 at Amazon.com / $9.91 at BN.com).

Arthur and George (Fiction)

by Julian Barnes

446 pages

Synopsis: Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician, sportsman, gentleman par excellence and the inventor of Sherlock Holmes; George is George Edalji, also a real, if less well-known person, whose path crossed not quite fatefully with the famous author's. Edalji was the son of a Parsi father (who was a Shropshire vicar), and a Scots mother. In 1903, George, a solicitor, was accused of writing obscene, threatening letters to his own family and of mutilating cattle in his farm community. He was convicted of criminal behavior in a blatant miscarriage of justice based on racial prejudice. Eventually, Sir Arthur ("Irish by ancestry, Scottish by birth") heard about George's case and began to advocate on his behalf. In this combination psychological novel, detective story and literary thriller, Barnes elegantly dissects early 20th-century English society as he spins this true-life story with subtle and restrained irony. Every line delivered by the many characters—the two principals, their school chums (Barnes sketches their early lives), their families and many incidentals—rings with import. His dramatization of George's trial, in particular, grinds with telling minutiae, and his portrait of Arthur is remarkably rich, even when tackling Doyle's spiritualist side. Shortlisted for the Booker, this novel about love, guilt, identity and honor is a triumph of storytelling, taking the form Barnes perfected inFlaubert's Parrot (1985) and stretching it yet again.

God Grew Tired of Us (Memoir)

by John Bul Dau

301 pages

Synopsis: "Lost Boy" John Bul Dau’s harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau’s journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres and attacks by wild animals. His tortuous, 14-year journey began in 1987, when he was just 13, and took him on a 1,000-mile walk, barefoot, to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, then to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived with thousands of other Lost Boys. In 2001, at the age of 27, he immigrated to the United States. With touching humor, Dau recounts the shock of his tribal culture colliding with life in America. He shares the joy of reuniting with his family and the challenges of making a new life for himself while never forgetting the other Lost Boys he left behind.

Heather's Suggestions

2011-12-04T18:29:00.004-07:00

Moloka'i (Fiction)

by Alan Brennert

400 pages

Synopsis: This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place---and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.

Rachel Kalama, a spirited seven-year-old Hawaiian girl, dreams of visiting far-off lands like her father, a merchant seaman. Then one day a rose-colored mark appears on her skin, and those dreams are stolen from her. Taken from her home and family, Rachel is sent to Kalaupapa, the quarantined leprosy settlement on the island of Moloka'i. Here her life is supposed to end---but instead she discovers it is only just beginning.

With a vibrant cast of vividly realized characters, Moloka'i is the true-to-life chronicle of a people who embraced life in the face of death. Such is the warmth, humor, and compassion of this novel that "few readers will remain unchanged by Rachel's story".

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Non-Fiction)

by Leslie Chang

448 pages

Synopsis: Chang, a former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, explores the urban realities and rural roots of a community, until now, as unacknowledged as it is massive—China's 130 million workers whose exodus from villages to factory and city life is the largest migration in history. Chang spent three years following the successes, hardships and heartbreaks of two teenage girls, Min and Chunming, migrants working the assembly lines in Dongguan, one of the new factory cities that have sprung up all over China. The author's incorporation of their diaries, e-mails and text messages into the narrative allows the girls—with their incredible ambition and youth—to emerge powerfully upon the page. Dongguan city is itself a character, with talent markets where migrants talk their way into their next big break, a lively if not always romantic online dating community and a computerized English language school where students shave their heads like monks to show commitment to their studies. A first generation Chinese-American, Chang uses details of her own family's immigration to provide a vivid personal framework for her contemporary observations. A gifted storyteller, Chang plumbs these private narratives to craft a work of universal relevance.

To Say Nothing of the Dog (Science Fiction)

by Connie Willis

512 pages

Synopsis: What a stitch! Willis' delectable romp through time from 2057 back to Victorian England, with a few side excursions into World War II and medieval Britain, will have readers happily glued to the pages. Rich dowager Lady Schrapnell has invaded Oxford University's time travel research project in 2057, promising to endow it if they help her rebuild Coventry Cathedral, destroyed by a Nazi air raid in 1940. In effect, she dragoons almost everyone in the program to make trips back in time to locate items--in particular, the bishop's bird stump, an especially ghastly example of Victorian decorative excess. Time traveler Ned Henry is suffering from advanced time lag and has been sent, he thinks, for rest and relaxation to 1888, where he connects with fellow time traveler Verity Kindle and discovers that he is actually there to correct an incongruity created when Verity inadvertently brought something forward from the past. Take an excursion through time, add chaos theory, romance, plenty of humor, a dollop of mystery, and a spoof of the Victorian novel, and you end up with what seems like a comedy of errors but is actually a grand scheme "involving the entire course of history and all of time and space that, for some unfathomable reason, chose to work out its designs with cats and croquet mallets and penwipers, to say nothing of the dog. And a hideous piece of Victorian artwork."

Rosalie's Suggestions

2011-11-22T14:28:00.011-07:00

Unbroken (Biography)

by Laura Hillenbrand

473 pages

Synopsis: A biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini. As a boy, Louis had been an incorrigible delinquent but as a teenager he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a talent that carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. When WWII came, he became an airman. Shot down over the Pacific he survived thirst, starvation, and sharks on a foundering raft. Captured by the Japanese, he survived for more than two and half years in several brutal Japanese internment camps as a prisoner of war.

His story is a story of the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

NOTE: Hardcover only ($13.99 from Amazon.com / $14.67 from BN.com).

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (Non-Fiction)

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

288 pages

Synopsis: When her father and brother had to flee Kabul, Kamila Sidiqui had to find a way to survive under Taliban rule. With nothing but an idea and the tenacity to see it through, she started a home business with her sisters that grew to support the finances of an entire neighborhood. Without any sewing skills to begin with, she learned to sew and she and her sisters worked from their home in the Khair Khana area of Kabul. As orders for dresses and pant suits started to increase, so did demand for additional pairs of hands. Soon, word got out about the business, and women from all over the area came knocking on their door. What started out as Kamila's idea to feed her own family turned into a source of income for other women in her community.

After the American invasion and the fall of the Taliban, Kamila set up a women's center in Kabul that offered literacy classes and vocational courses.

NOTE: Paperback release scheduled for 3/20/12.

Lost in Shangri-La (Non-Fiction)

by Mitchell Zuckoff

400 pages

Synopsis: In the final days of World War II, 24 soldiers and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over a newly discovered valley deep within the jungle-covered mountains of Dutch New Guinea populated by thousands of spear-carrying tribesmen, rumored to be cannibals.
Owing to a lethal combination of foolishness and inexperience, the plane crashed, killing all aboard except two soldiers and a WAC. They faced certain death unless they left the crash site because the jungle canopy was so dense no rescue plane could see them. Wounded and in pain, the trio made a harrowing trip down the steep mountainside to a small clearing where they thought a rescue plane could see them. Their clearing turned out to be a sweet potato patch of a primitive tribe of superstitious natives who had never before seen a white person. This is a fascinating true story of one of the final first-contacts in human history.

A search plane located them and dropped food, medicines, blankets, and a walkie-talkie. Paratroopers risked their own lives to help the survivors. But with no place to land an airplane, the mountain air too thin for helicopters, and the threat of thousands of hostile Japanese soldiers hiding between the injured group and the sea, Army commanders grappled with how to rescue the survivors and the paratroopers.

NOTE: Paperback release scheduled for 5/1/12.

Hello lovely ladies!!

2011-11-06T14:05:00.001-07:00

We will discuss the book 'Tamar' at Kim's house on Thursday November 10th at 7:30. If for some reason you are unable to attend...those of us who will be there will be discussing you and your reason for not attending :-)
Please come and bask in the glow of book group!
Love to all,
Kim

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2011-06-08T00:27:00.006-06:00

Thursday, June 9th
7:30 p.m.
Tiffanie's house

(I emailed a map, but call me if you need directions.)

I hope everyone can come!

Little Bee

2011-03-03T14:30:00.003-07:00

Hi Everyone, I am looking forward to having book group at my home next week. Interesting book...I'can't believe this group picked this one to read. Oh well, one must have some diversity in life.

Melanie

February Book Group

2011-02-09T00:31:00.006-07:00

We will be discussing "The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag" by Alan Bradley.

Thursday, February 10th, 7:30pm @ Amy's house.

See you there!

The People Have Spoken

2011-01-06T00:30:00.002-07:00

With 66% of the votes, The Help was the favored book of 2010.

Thanks for voting, everyone!

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

2011-01-05T20:10:00.002-07:00

I found this at Costco. Get it before it sells out!

Your 2011 Shopping List

2010-12-12T22:19:00.003-07:00

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

A Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

In the Heart of the Sea by Nathanial Philbrick

The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

Tamar by Mal Peet

2010-12-10T22:19:00.001-07:00

Heather's Suggestions

2010-12-09T00:17:00.005-07:00

Between Here and April

by Deborah Copaken Kogan

304 pages

Synopsis: When a deep-rooted memory suddenly surfaces, Elizabeth Burns becomes obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of her childhood friend April Cassidy. Driven to investigate, Elizabeth discovers a thirty-five-year-old newspaper article revealing the details that had been hidden from her as a child—shocking revelations about April’s mother, Adele.

Elizabeth, now herself a mother, tracks down the people who knew Adele Cassidy and who thought that they knew what was going through her mind before she committed that most incomprehensible of crimes. She seeks out anyone who might help piece together the final months, days, and hours of this troubled woman’s life—from Adele’s former neighbor to her psychiatrist to her sister.

But the answers are more elusive than any normal investigation can yield, the questions raised are difficult to contemplate. In fact, the further into the story Elizabeth digs, the more she is forced to accept that she and Adele might not be so different.

Elizabeth’s exploration thus leads her ultimately back to herself: her compromised marriage, her increasing self-doubt, her desire for more out of her career and her life, and finally to a fearsome reckoning with what it means to be a wife and mother.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

by Aimee Bender

292 pages

Synopsis: On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

320 pages

Synopsis: On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary Anning learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms, and landslips, her challenges only grow when she falls in love with an impossible man.

Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset.

Colette's Suggestions

2010-12-09T00:02:00.003-07:00

Outliers: The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell

320 pages

Synopsis: In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Some Don't

by Jim Collins

300 pages (HARDCOVER)

Synopsis: Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers

began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come.

Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love

by Sue Johnson

320 pages

Synopsis: Developed over 20 years ago and practiced all over the world, Emotionally Focused Therapy has been heralded by Time magazine and the New York Times as one of the only types of therapy to actually work. Couples who practice EFT see a 75% success rate (compared to 30% for other forms of relationship therapy). EFT focuses on the emotional connection of every relationship by de-escalating conflict, creating a safe emotional connection, and strengthening bonds between partners.

Now in paperback, HOLD ME TIGHT introduces readers to EFT and illustrates a program they can use in their own relationships. Part I introduces the view of love as an attachment bond and applies this view to relationship problems. Part II offers seven "conversations" that focus on key moments. Readers can use these to understand their responses and relationships better. Included are exercises to help couples work through the process.

Melanie's Suggestions

2010-12-03T19:54:00.007-07:00

Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt

by Robert Gottlieb

256 pages (HARDCOVER)

Synopsis: Gottlieb launches Yale’s Jewish Lives series with a digestible account of the life and times of the “Divine Sarah.” Although much has been already been written about Sarah, most of it has been embellished—the imaginative actress herself was not above creatively reworking or entirely fabricating episodes from her own life. What Gottlieb attempts, and mostly succeeds in doing, is separating the legend from the reality. When he is unable to do so definitively, he grounds each scenario in whatever historical evidence or plausible data does exist, allowing readers to draw their own educated conclusions. Where this biography truly shines, however, is in the mini-portraits of the people who played significant roles in Sarah’s saga; family, friends, colleagues, rivals, admirers, detractors, and lovers are vividly brought to life. The result: one of the greatest actresses of all time stars in the story of her life, surrounded by an extraordinary cast of supporting characters.

Falling Home

by Karen White

464 pages

Synopsis: Cassie Madison has it all: a high-powered advertising career, a stylish Manhattan apartment, and a sophisticated, rich, and gorgeous fiance. It's a far cry from her childhood in Walton, Georgia, home of the annual Kudzu Festival and hot, sticky summers. And then there are all the bad memories, the heartache. When Cassie's estranged sister calls to say that her father

is dying, Cassie knows it's time to set aside her feelings and go home and face the sister she hasn't seen in 15 years. When her father dies, he leaves the family home to Cassie, who can't wait to get rid of it and get back to New York, her job, and her fiance, even if it means having a developer tear down the house. But something keeps her in Walton, and she doesn't know if it's her mending relationship with her sister; the irresistible, aggravating Sam Parker, who wants her to preserve her house; or the fee

ling of finally being home.

Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Education in Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Greg Mortenson

448 pages

Synopsis: In his latest book, Greg Mortenson hosts the reader as a valuable and welcomed traveling companion as he retraces his steps through the most remote areas of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier areas and the formidable terrain of Afghanistan holding a mirror to our humanity. Mortneson introduces us to his trusted companions, turned employees, of Central Asia Institute, the so-called "Dirty Dozen", who truly embody the virtues of goodwill and perseverance in the name of literacy and, of course, God.

Mortenson's committment to cross-cultural understanding beyond the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan is rivaled only by his determination to educate the under-served girls in the most remote areas of these countries. Stones into Schools is a suspenseful, heart-breaking as it is heart-warming, true account of a life well lived and a people well served. Mortenson is an honor to the human race and a diplomat for world peace. About now, Greg Mortenson would do well to take his own advice and sit for a month under a walnut tree to recuperate.

Jeana's Suggestions

2010-12-01T17:35:00.004-07:00

The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

464 pages

Synopsis: Set during the Great Depression, it traces the migration of an Oklahoma Dust Bowl family to California and their subsequent hardships as migrant farm workers. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940. The work did much to publicize the injustices of migrant labor. The narrative, interrupted by prose-poem interludes, chronicles the struggles of the Joad family's life on a failing Oklahoma farm, their difficult journey to California, and their disillusionment once they arrive there and fall prey to a parasitic economic system. The insularity of the Joads--Ma's obsession with family togetherness, son Tom's self-centeredness, and daughter Rose of Sharon's materialism--ultimately gives way to a sense of universal community.

In the Heart of the Sea

by Nathanial Philbrick

302 pages

Synopsis: In 1820, the 240-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, it was repeatedly rammed and sunk by an eighty-ton bull sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, made for the 3,000-mile-distant coast of South America in three tiny boats. During ninety days at sea under horrendous conditions, the survivors clung to life as one by one they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear. In the Heart of the Sea tells perhaps the greatest sea story ever. Philbrick interweaves his account of this extraordinary ordeal of ordinary men with a wealth of whale lore and with a brilliantly detailed portrait of the lost, unique community of Nantucket whalers.

Impeccably researched and beautifully told, the book delivers the ultimate portrait of man against nature, drawing on a remarkable range of archival and modern sources, including a long-lost account by the ship's cabin boy. At once a literary companion and a page turner that speaks to the same issues of class, race, and man's relationship to nature that permeate the works of Melville, In the Heart of the Sea will endure as a vital work of American history.

Joy School

by Elizabeth Berg

208 pages

Synopsis: In this exquisite new novel by bestselling writer Elizabeth Berg, a young girl falls in love - and learns how sorrow can lead to an understanding of joy. Katie has moved to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father. She feels very alone: her much-loved mother is dead; she finds it difficult to settle in, in her new school and her only friends fall far short of being ideal companions. When she falls through the ice while skating, she meets Jimmy. He is handsome, older than her, and married, but she is entranced. As their relationship unfolds, so too does Katie's awareness of the pain and intensity first love can bring. Those that hurt the most can sometimes teach us the lessons that really matter.

Kim's Suggestions

2010-12-01T17:01:00.007-07:00

Tamar

by Mal Peet

432 pages

Synopsis: When her grandfather dies, Tamar inherits a box containing clues and coded messages. Out of the past another Tamar emerges, a man involved in the terrifying world of resistance fi ghters in Nazi-occupied Holland. His story is one of passion, love, jealousy, and tragedy, and unraveling it will transform Tamar's life.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

320 pages

Synopsis: In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Cutting For Stone

by Abraham Verghese

688 pages

Synopsis: A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel–an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics–their passion for the same woman–that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him–nearly destroying him–Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.

Shelley's Suggestions

2010-12-01T16:50:00.004-07:00

The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

by Robert Alexander

229 pages

Synopsis: The final days of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, and his family are still a fascinating mystery. There is no one left to bear witness to what happened at the execution. Or is there? Alexander takes a very real, but forgotten and overlooked, potential witness, a young kitchen boy, and creates an amazing fictional account of what may have transpired. Leonka was working as a kitchen boy to the Romanov family when the Bolsheviks captured them, exiled them to Siberia, and imprisoned them in their house. Because of his lowly position in the household, Leonka was able to see and hear secret things. And he does keep them secret until decades later, knowing he is ready to die, he reveals all he knows about the imperial family and their horrific death. Alexander includes as much historically accurate information into his fiction as possible, and he includes actual letters and notes attributed to the Romanovs, which add a touch of authenticity. He also renders the plot beautifully with one final jaw-dropping and satisfying twist.

Poison Study

by Maria Snyder

416 pages

Synopsis: Shivers, obsession, sleepless nights—these are the results not of one of the milder poisons that novice food-taster Yelena must learn during her harrowing job training but of newcomer Snyder's riveting fantasy that unites the intelligent political focus of George R.R. Martin with a subtle yet potent romance. Through a stroke of luck, Yelena escapes execution in exchange for tasting the food of the Commander, ruler of Ixia. Though confined to a dank prison cell and doomed to a painful death, Yelena slowly blooms again, caught up in castle politics. But some people are too impatient to wait for poison to finish off Yelena. With the help of Valek, her steely-nerved, cool-eyed boss and the Commander's head of security, she soon discovers that she has a starring role to play in Ixia's future—a role that could lead to her being put to death as a budding magician even if she hits each cue perfectly. The first in a series, this is one of those rare books that will keep readers dreaming long after they've read it.

A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True

by Brigid Pasulka

368 pages

Synopsis: Pasulka's delightful debut braids together two tales of old and new Poland. The old is the fairy tale love story of the Pigeon, a young man so entranced by village beauty Anielica that he builds her family a house to prove his devotion. When war comes to Poland, the Pigeon works for the resistance, guarding the town and his Jewish sister-in-law with creativity and bravery. After the war, he and Anielica get engaged and the Pigeon brings his family to Kraków, but the fabled promises of the golden city and the glories of communism prove hollow. The new tale is about Anielica and the Pigeon's granddaughter, Beata, whose plainness has earned her the nickname Baba Yaga. Now living in a much-changed Kraków, Beata is a bar girl with no hopes of love or plans for the future. When tragedy strikes and Beata uncovers family secrets, she brings together the old and new to create her own bright future. Pasulka creates a world that's magical despite the absence of magical happenings, and where Poland's history is bound up in one family's story.

Joanne's Suggestions

2010-11-30T23:34:00.007-07:00

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan
464 pages

Synopsis: Pollan examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals.

The Botany of Desire

by Michael Pollan

271 pages

Synopsis: In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half

centuries later, Amsterdam is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular plant thought this time the obsessions re

volves around the intoxicating effects of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers, of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial ruin?

In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds's most basic yearnings and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating whom?

Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature.

The Enchanted April

by Elizabeth von Arnim

208 pages

Synopsis: Four English ladies, strangers to each other, rent a villa for a month near Portofino.

Amy's Suggestions

2010-11-30T23:33:00.012-07:00

The Mouse that Roared

by Leonard Wibberley

280 pages

Synopsis: The basis of the 1959 film starring Peter Sellers, this classic cold war satire-cum-parable-cum-political farce was first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post almost 50 years ago, appearing under the title The Day New York Was Invaded. At the time, the U.S. was afraid of a nuclear attack by Russia — the idea of an attack by a small country was so absurd as to seem comical. Wibberley’s tiny European nation is furious about unfair U.S. trading practices, so they send an army to invade New York City, march up Broadway, and accidentally capture the world’s newest and most destructive bomb. Then they have to figure out what to do with it. A whimsical cross between Kubrick and Kafka, The Mouse That Roared is a quirky classic of world literature, a poignant tale of political morality, and a hilarious, ultimately triumphant portrait of international relations from the perspective of the little guy.

The Book of Lost Things

by John Connolly

480 pages

Synopsis: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things.

An imaginative tribute to the journey we must all make through the loss of innocence into adulthood, John Connolly's latest novel is a book for every adult who can recall the moment when childhood began to fade, and for every adult about to face that moment. The Book of Lost Things is a story of hope for all who have lost, and for all who have yet to lose. It is an exhilarating tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

by Alan Bradley

400 pages

Synopsis: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously smart eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders, thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—until beloved puppeteer Rupert Porson has his own strings sizzled in an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. But who’d do such a thing, and why? Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What about Porson’s charming but erratic assistant? All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head? (In paperback February, 2011)

Rosalie's Suggestions

2010-11-30T23:32:00.005-07:00

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
by Helen Simonson
384 pages

Synopsis: The major of the title is a widower who has just lost his brother. Major Pettigrew slowly develops an extremely correct yet warm friendship with Mrs. Ali, a widow who runs the local convenience store and shares his love of reading.

England is not an easily welcoming place for those seen as outsiders. Mrs. Ali is part of a Pakistani family and
the pressures of Pakistani family life are sensitively portrayed, with Mrs. Ali torn between her family, especially her controlling brother-in-law, and the freedom the broader, liberal society of Britain has to offer.

That love can overcome cultural barriers is no new theme, but it’s presented here with great sensitivity and delicacy. We want this couple to find romance — and they do. We want the major to survive the machinations of his obnoxious son — and he does. “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” is refreshing in its optimism and its faith in the transformative possibilities of courtesy and kindness. Although pitched toward those wanting a gentle read, it also slides a powerful moral message into the interstices of village politics and conventions.

The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Mornon
370 pages

Synopsis: After her grandmother Nell's death, Cassandra learns that Nell wasn't who she thought she was. It turns out that Nell had been raised by a couple who found her on the dock after she had been abandoned on the boat that had carried her from England to Australia at the age of four. Nell had attempted to research her own heritage, but the sudden appearance of Cassandra in her life prevented her from putting all the pieces together. Cassandra takes it upon herself to solve the mystery for her grandmother once and for all. The story weaves back and forth between three generations -- Cassandra in 2005, Nell in 1975, and the two women in Cornwall who are the key to the puzzle in the early years of the twentieth century

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
by Immaculee Ilibagazia
219 pages

Synopsis: In 1994, Rwandan native Ilibagiza was 22 years old and home from college to spend Easter with her devout Catholic family when the death of Rwanda's Hutu president sparked a three-month slaughter of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis. She survived by hiding in a Hutu pastor's tiny bathroom with seven other women for 91 cramped, terrifying days. The account of her experience cuts two ways: her description of the evil that was perpetrated, including the brutal murders of her family members, is devastating, yet the story of her unquenchable faith and connection to God throughout the ordeal uplifts and inspires. It was during those endless hours that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having unwavering trust in God. She did everything she could, then trusted him to help her find a job, later to find a husband, and eventually to seek out and forgive her family‛s killers. Her story is inspiring.

Charlotte's Suggestions

2010-11-30T23:31:00.009-07:00

The Wet Engine

by Brian Doyle

170 pages

Synopsis: Nine years ago the author's wife gave birth to twin boys. One was entirely normal, but the other was missing a chamber in his heart. At five months and again at 18 months, Liam had open-heart surgery. Someday he will need a heart transplant, but for now he "runs around like an insane dorky gawky goofy heron and rides his bike and shoots hoop, and skateboards and swings and punches out his brother and snarls at his sister and refuses to make his bed...." This book is about Liam, and it is also about his surgeon, his family and dozens of others with heart-related stories. It is about heart as a physical organ—how it is supposed to work, how surgeons try to fix it when it doesn't—and about heart as a metaphor for "the distilled essence of character and spirit." Most of all, it is about love, which has "many forms and levels and shapes and flavors and speeds and depths and topographies and landscapes and colors and musics." Doyle, the author of four other books of essays, sometimes spins out of control with sprawling stream-of-consciousness sentences, and he says "waaaay" waaaay too often. Still, it is hard to put down this wide-ranging meditation on the fragile mysteries of human life."No one writes quite like Brian Doyle. He is lyrical, literate, unpredictable, unafraid, kind, and damned

funny. In this book, he is also incredibly moving, as he writes about his son's wounded heart and the doctors who save him. As he explores all the emotions and science leading outward into the world from his family's journey, we share in his curiosity and his reverence and his joy. A fine book."

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford

290 pages

Synopsis: In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel,

once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol. This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept. Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic

father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart..

Women, Food, and God

by Geneen Roth

211 pages (hardcover)

Synopsis: The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself.

Tiffanie's Suggestions

2010-11-30T23:20:00.004-07:00

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson (Translator)

336 pages

Synopsis: We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renee, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renee is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she

scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.

Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Renee hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renee's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

by Helen Simonson

384 pages

Synopsis: You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.

The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?

Little Bee

by Chris Cleave

271 pages

Synopsis: The story opens in a refugee detention center outside of London. As the Nigerian narrator-who got her nickname "Little Bee" as a child-prepares to leave the center, she thinks of her homeland and recalls a horrific memory. "In the immigration detention center, they told us we must be disciplined," she says. "This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready." After Little Bee's release, the first-person narration switches to Sarah, a magazine editor in London struggling to come to terms with her husband Andrew's recent suicide, as well as the stubborn behavior of her four-year-old son, Charlie, who refuses to take off his Batman costume. While negotiating her family troubles, Sarah reflects on "the long summer when Little Bee came to live with us." Cleave alternates the viewpoints of the two women, patiently revealing the connection between them. A few years prior, Sarah and Andrew took a vacation to the Nigerian coast, not realizing the full extent to which the oil craze had torn the country apart. One night they stumble upon Little Bee and her sister, who are fleeing a group of rapacious soldiers prowling the beach. The frightening confrontation proves life-changing for everyone involved, though in ways they couldn't have imagined. A few years later Sarah and Little Bee come together again in the suburbs of London, and their friendship-in addition to that between Little Bee and Charlie-provides some salvation for each woman. Thoughless piercing and urgent than his debut, Cleave's narrative pulses with portentous, nearly spectral energy, and the author maintains a well-modulated balance between the two narrators. A solid sophomore effort, and hopefully a sign of even better things to come.

Location for Early Bird

2010-10-21T22:39:00.003-06:00

While most of us surely wish we were meeting around a pool in Century Village, alas we are not. But nearly just as cool...we'll be meeting at Jeana's place instead of Heather's. (Although, it must be said, we would have enjoyed the trip up north as well, Heather.)

So...November 18th at Jeana's to discuss "Early Bird".

Read on, dear friends, read on.

The Hunger Games

2010-10-13T19:58:00.003-06:00

At Amy's House

Thursday October 14th

7:30pm

(Be there or next month we'll put you in a ring to fight to the death!)

Another Schedule Change

2010-09-24T23:09:00.005-06:00

There has been another change for November.

The 11th won't work, but everyone in attendance at Shelley's this month thought it would work to push it back a week. So we'll be discussing Early Bird on Thursday, November 18th (location TBA).

Hopefully that night will work for everyone.

Change in Schedule

2010-08-16T11:46:00.005-06:00

Heather and I will be swapping months for our books. The changed schedule will be as follows:

OCTOBER 14

HUNGER GAMES

@ AMY'S

NOVEMBER 11

EARLY BIRD

@ HEATHER'S

I hope the swap is okay with everyone. Thanks!

A Tale of Two Cities

2010-08-12T22:31:00.003-06:00

Sorry we missed so many of you this month. I hope my early email didn't confuse you. We had a great discussion with all of us having read the novel. We loved it and love Dickens. He is such a great writer. We thought that the characters in the novel we admirable, which is so lacking in today's novels.

Date Change As of August

2010-07-15T12:18:00.002-06:00

We did it again: we changed the book group night. So, mark your calendars for the rest of the year. Our book group meetings will be held on

the 2nd THURSDAY of every month.

(The dates listed in the right-hand column have been updated to reflect the change.)

Thank you!

Big Burn

2010-06-12T17:20:00.002-06:00

This Wednesday, June 16, 2010 @ 7:30 pm- Melanie's Home

"The Big Burn"

The Big Burn

2010-05-18T21:11:00.001-06:00

Hey Book Groupies...there was talk that some would like to up the date of June's get together from the 16th to the 9th. Let me know if this works in your schedule.

Bel Canto

2010-05-09T11:05:00.001-06:00

I just cannot get into this book tell me why?????

Is This Thing On?

2010-04-29T20:37:00.004-06:00

I'm just checking here...

Does anyone, anywhere, EVER check this blog?

Cause I do. And I feel lonely.

Give a shout out if you do...cause I'm gonna start haranguing people soon.

(Love you all! xoxo)

Amy

Bel Canto

2010-04-21T15:08:00.003-06:00

Are you reading it yet?

You should be.

I'm really only posting this to get that horrible picture of my Frankenstein forehead to move down a few inches.

Cheers.

The Help & Caramel Cake

2010-03-15T21:16:00.002-06:00

Look at that beautiful caramel cake! Thanks again for the wonderful evening Kim. :)

Sorry for the grainy phone picture...

Let's Get Cookin'

2010-03-11T21:20:00.002-07:00

I am officially getting the ball rolling on our Book Group Cookbook. That's right...we have shared so many delicious dishes over the last decade (and then some) that it's high time we put it in print and shared the love!

Gather together your most favorite book group meeting recipes and send them my way. If there are any recipes you're particularly anxious for someone else to share, make a request and we'll make sure it happens.

I'm excited to see what we get...it'll be a delicious trip down memory lane!

Hugs and kisses!

Amy

It's coming!!

2010-03-05T21:52:00.002-07:00

Book group is coming up again and I for one can't wait...it is next Wednesday night, March 10th, 7:30pm at Kim's. Can't wait to see everyone!
Kim

Sweet!

2010-02-11T10:07:00.005-07:00

For those of you who missed book group last night, I thought I'd share a little taste of what you missed.

We all liked the book.
Some of us really liked the book.
Rosalie is still miffed that we didn't vote for Left to Tell instead.
Some of us felt that our lives were already abounding in drama and were glad not to read Left to Tell at this time.
Amy's childhood was replete with examples of What Not To Do To Your Siblings.
Kim proved that mothers can still embarrass their adult children.
Everyone should visit the Distribution Center and check out the new products.
Menopause is not fun.
Colette needs a new family picture.
Some of us are glad that Alan Bradley is writing more Flavia de Luce books (one coming in March).
The Venus is a woman's friend (best friend?)
There were FAR TOO MANY OF US MISSING!!!!

Hope to see you ALL next month at Kim's house. We'll be discussing The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

Top Twenty Books by Amazon

2009-12-30T15:27:00.003-07:00

I thought we did an awesome job with our picks this year. Three of ours made the top 20 at Amazon's best for 2009! BTW Rosalie, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is #20! The other two were Big Burn and The Help.

Cutest Blog on the Block

2009-12-19T11:20:00.002-07:00

Tiffanie deserves some great appreciation for maintaining out blog. It always looks so good and she changes the background frequently. You'll have to show me how you do this without losing the content.

Tiffanie's Suggestions

2009-12-13T12:45:00.005-07:00

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
374 pages

Synopsis: In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival. (adolescent literature)

So Brave, Young and Handsome
by Leif Enger
304 pages

Synopsis: The new novel by Leif Enger, author of the million-copy best seller, Peace Like a River, is a lively, big-hearted redemption tale; an unforgettable, picaresque Western yarn.

In 1915 Minnesota, writer Monte Becket has lost his sense of purpose. His only success long behind him, Monte lives simply with his wife and son until he befriends outlaw Glendon Hale. Plagued by guilt over abandoning his wife two decades ago, Glendon aims to go back West on a quest for absolution. As the modern age marches swiftly forward, Monte agrees to travel into Glendon’s past, leaving behind his own family for a journey that will test the depth of his loyalties and morals, and the strength of his resolve. As they flee the relentless ex-Pinkerton who’s been hunting Glendon for years, Monte falls ever further from his family and the law, to be tempered by a fiery adventure from which he may never get home.

With its smooth mix of romanticism and gritty reality, So Brave, Young, and Handsome examines one ordinary man’s determination as he risks everything in order to understand what it’s all worth, and follows an unlikely dream in the hope it will lead him back home.

Child 44
by Tom Rob Smith
528 pages

A propulsive, relentless page-turner.

"There is no crime."

Stalin's Soviet Union strives to be a paradise for its workers, providing for all of their needs. One of its fundamental pillars is that its citizens live free from the fear of ordinary crime and criminals.

But in this society, millions do live in fear . . . of the State. Death is a whisper away. The mere suspicion of ideological disloyalty-owning a book from the decadent West, the wrong word at the wrong time-sends millions of innocents into the Gulags or to their executions. Defending the system from its citizens is the MGB, the State Security Force. And no MGB officer is more courageous, conscientious, or idealistic than Leo Demidov.

A war hero with a beautiful wife, Leo lives in relative luxury in Moscow, even providing a decent apartment for his parents. His only ambition has been to serve his country. For this greater good, he has arrested and interrogated.

Then the impossible happens. A different kind of criminal-a murderer-is on the loose, killing at will. At the same time, Leo finds himself demoted and denounced by his enemies, his world turned upside down, and every belief he's ever held shattered. The only way to save his life and the lives of his family is to uncover this criminal. But in a society that is officially paradise, it's a crime against the State to suggest that a murderer-much less a serial killer-is in their midst. Exiled from his home, with only his wife, Raisa, remaining at his side, Leo must confront the vast resources and reach of the MBG to find and stop a criminal that the State won't admit even exists.

Melanie's Suggestion

2009-12-13T12:11:00.001-07:00

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America
by Timothy Egan
324 pages

Amazon Best of the Month, October 2009: When Theodore Roosevelt vacated the Oval Office, he left a vast legacy of public lands under the stewardship of the newly created Forest Service. Immediately, political enemies of the nascent conservation movement chipped away at the foundations of the untested agency, lobbying for a return of the land to private interests and development. Then, in 1910, several small wildfires in the Pacific Northwest merge into one massive, swift, and unstoppable blaze, and the Forest Service is pressed into a futile effort to douse the flames. Over 100 firefighters died heroically, galvanizing public opinion in favor of the forests--with unexpected ramifications exposed in today's proliferation of destructive fires. Just as he recounted the Dust Bowl experience in The Worst Hard Time (a National Book Award winner), The Big Burn vividly recreates disaster through the eyes of the men and women who experienced it (though this time without the benefit of first-hand accounts). It's another incredible--and incredibly compelling--feat of historical journalism.

Shelley's Suggestions

2009-12-13T12:07:00.003-07:00

Laddie, A True Blue Story
by Gene Stratton-Porter
408 pages

Synopsis: Loosely based on the author's childhood, Laddie is a double tale--the classic poor-boy, rich-girl romance and the story of a child of nature and her idyllic childhood. The narrator, Little Sister, is a girl who lives on a farm with her older siblings. Laddie, the oldest, is a strong influence on her life. As Little Sister grows, she realizes the value of experience in learning about nature. Although schooling and books teach her the names of plants and animals, it is only by being outside and observing her environment that she truly learns. Like Gene Stratton-Porter, Little Sister was not meant for a life indoors. Her joy in life is being with nature, not living and working in indoor confinement. This novel is a good one to read to understand Stratton-Porter's childhood and how it later affected her life and work.

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
224 pages

Synopsis: "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

The Good Soldiers
by David Finkel
304 pages

Synopsis: Several meticulously researched and insightful books have explored why the United States went to war in Iraq. Works like Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco and Barton Gellman's Angler have thoroughly examined the hubris, confused thinking, and ever-changing rationales for the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, but no one volume has fully captured the day-to-day grind and lethal reality faced by American troops on the ground in Iraq. Until now.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel, a Washington Post staff writer, spent over a year with an American infantry battalion, known as the 2-16 (whose average age is 19), as they deployed from Fort Riley in Kansas to one of the most dangerous, war-ravaged areas of Baghdad. Carefully detailing the experiences of the 2-16 and its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, Finkel has crafted a wartime account so visceral and so emotionally wrenching that it will leave many readers stunned.

Kim's Suggestions

2009-12-13T11:58:00.005-07:00

The Day the Falls Stood Still
by Cathy Marie Buchanan
320 pages

Set against the resounding backdrop of the falls, Cathy Marie Buchanan's carefully researched, capaciously imagined debut novel entwines the romantic trials of a young couple with the historical drama of the exploitation of the river's natural resources. The current of the river, like that of the human heart, is under threat: "Sometimes it seems like the river is being made into this measly thing," says Tom, bemoaning the shortsighted schemes of the power companies. "The river's been bound up with cables and concrete and steel, like a turkey at Christmastime."

Skillfully portraying individuals, families, a community, and an environment imperiled by progress and the devastations of the Great War, The Day the Falls Stood Still beautifully evokes the wild wonder of its setting, a wonder that always overcomes any attempt to tame it. But at the same time, Buchanan's tale never loses hold of the gripping emotions of Tom and Bess's intimate drama. The result is a transporting novel that captures both the majesty of nature and the mystery of love.

Goose Girl
by Shannon Hale
300 pages

The Goose Girl is a retelling of a lesser-known Grimms's fairy tale. Ani is the crown princess of Kildenree, trying desperately to overcome her natural affinity for animals to please her mother and become accepted as the future queen. But when her mother betrays her and ships her off to be a strange prince's bride in a neighboring country, she realizes that she will need whatever skills she has to save herself from the onslaught of betrayals that will come from those she once trusted.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
by Katherine Howe
384 pages

"Have you not considered the distinct possibility that the accused were simply guilty of witchcraft?"

Connie Godwin thinks her academic advisor is teasing her: she has mastered the scholarship surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692 and knows the question he poses is preposterous. She never suspects that answering it will alter everything she knows about the past, her family, and the professor himself. Interweaving two narratives, one set in 1991 and one set three centuries earlier, Katherine Howe's debut novel is a marvel of invention and historical reconstruction. The author employs her training as an historian to vividly depict the realities of 17th-century Salem, dramatizing the plight of the unfortunate victims as they fall prey to the mania of their accusers. But it is the leap of imagination by which she connects Connie to that distant past that turns The Physick Book of Deliverance Daneinto a bewitching reading experience.

Heather's Suggestions

2009-12-13T11:54:00.004-07:00

Small Change: The Secret Life of Penny Burford
by J. Belinda Yandell
160 pages

A devoted housewife scoops up her husband’s loose change and eventually puts together a substantial bank account. The family learns of this account, and the many things she used it for, after her death. Why Penny did what she did becomes the story.

Early Bird
Rodney Rothman
256 pages

Everyone says they would like to retire early, but Rodney Rothman actually did it — forty years early. Burnt out, he decides at the age of twenty-eight to get an early start on his golden years. He travels to Boca Raton, Florida, where he moves in with an elderly piano teacher at Century Village, a retirement community that is home to thousands of senior citizens.

Early Bird is an irreverent, hilarious, and ultimately warmhearted account of Rodney's journey deep into the heart of retirement. Rodney struggles for acceptance from the senior citizens he shares a swimming pool with and battles with cranky octogenarians who want him off their turf. Before long he observes, "I don't think Tuesdays with Morrie would have been quite so uplifting if that guy had to spend more than one day a week with Morrie."

The House Keeper and the Professor
by Yoko Ogawa
192 pages

A brilliant mathematician, the Professor was seriously injured in a car accident and his short-term memory only lasts for 80 minutes. He can remember his theorems and favorite baseballs players, but the Housekeeper must reintroduce herself every morning, sometimes several times a day. The Housekeeper learns how to work with him through the memory lapses until they can come together on common ground.

Joanne's Suggestions

2009-12-13T11:42:00.005-07:00

The Ugly American
by Eugene Burdick and Wm. J. Lederer

Synopsis: First published in 1958, The Ugly American became a runaway national bestseller for its slashing expos&eaccute; of American arrogance, incompetence, and corruption in Southeast Asia. Based on fact, the book's eye-opening stories and sketches drew a devastating picture of how the United States was losing the struggle with Communism in Asia. Combining gripping storytelling with an urgent call to action, the book prompted President Eisenhower to launch a study of our military aid program that led the way to much-needed reform.

From Joanne: I recently read this and was thoroughly engaged. I remembered this title back in the 60's when I was a teen and heard many references to it but being only interested in romance and art at the time, paid no attention. It is a series of stories of Americans in different governmental capacities who go to Southeast Asia to live and work for the government. Some of them are idiots and some are heros who really work for the people of those countries. It was a great read and now I can see why this book was being talked about and referenced and why it was so controversial. The heros of the book remind me of what our missionaries are expected to do.

North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell

Synopsis: Mary Gaskell's North and South examines the nature of social authority and obedience and provides an insightful description of the role of middle class women in nineteenth century society. Through the story of Margaret Hale, a southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skillfully explores issues of class and gender, as Margaret's sympathy for the town mill workers conflicts with her growing attraction to the mill owner, John Thornton. This new and revised expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.

From Joanne: A young woman from the south of England moves to the north of England with her family. She must confront the prejudices she brings with her about the people and their lives. There is a romance but it does not overshadow the compelling contrast of north and south England in the mid 1800's. The is a BBC mini-series based on this book. I have not read this, got it on good recommendation from a friend.

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
by C.S. Lewis
324 pages

Synopsis: This tale of two princesses - one beautiful and one unattractive - and of the struggle between sacred and profane love is Lewis’s reworking of the myth of Cupid and Psyche and one of his most enduring works.

Collette's Suggestions

2009-12-08T21:40:00.005-07:00

Blink
by Malcolm Gladwell
320 pages

In this best-seller, a staff writer for The New Yorker weighs the factors that determine good decision-making. Drawing on recent cognitive research, Gladwell concludes that those who quickly filter out extraneous information generally make better decisions than those who discount their first impressions. The author of The Tipping Point (2000) cites the implications for such areas as emergency situations and marketing, plus some notable exceptions.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
by AJ Jacobs
416 pages

Put a fine writer to work on a great idea and you get a book that is timely, at times hilarious, moving, profound, irreverent, and respectful. This memoir of a secular individual's attempts to obey the Bible, literally, for an entire year -- from the Ten Commandments to somewhat less publicized rules, such as avoiding clothes made of mixed fibers, playing a ten-string harp, and stoning adulterers. The Year of Living Biblically demonstrates that relations between believers and skeptics can be friendly and constructive.

Amy's Suggestions

2009-12-08T17:49:00.004-07:00

The Magic of Ordinary Days
by Ann Howard Creel
304 pages

Synopsis: Olivia Dunne, a studious minister's daughter who dreams of being an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. An exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, though, and she finds herself banished to a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding much-needed friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp. When Olivia unwittingly becomes an accomplice to a crime and is faced with betrayal, she finally confronts her own desires. Beautifully written and filled with memorable characters, Creel's novel is a powerful exploration of the nature of trust and love.

Those Who Save Us
by Jenna Blum
496 pages

Synopsis: For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.

The Heretic's Daughter
by Kathleen Kent
332 pages

Synopsis: Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in which they live. Often at odds with one another, mother and daughter are forced to stand together against the escalating hysteria of the trials and the superstitious tyranny that led to the torture and imprisonment of more than 200 people accused of witchcraft. This is the story of Martha's courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived.

Charlotte's Suggestions

2009-12-08T17:42:00.005-07:00

Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett
352 pages

Synopsis: Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different countries and continents become compatriots.

Without the demands of the world to shape their days, life on the inside becomes more beautiful than anything they had ever known before. At once riveting and impassioned, the narrative becomes a moving exploration of how people communicate when music is the only common language. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped.

China Study : The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health
by T. Colin Campbell
417 pages

Synopsis: Referred to as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" by The New York Times, this study examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in more than 2,500 counties across China and Taiwan, and conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. While revealing that proper nutrition can have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as curbing obesity, this text calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as the Atkins diet, that are widely popular in the West. The politics of nutrition and the impact of special interest groups in the creation and dissemination of public information are also discussed.

Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
352 pages

Synopsis: The eight stories in this collection revolve less around the dislocation Lahiri's earlier Bengali characters encountered in America and more around the assimilation experienced by their children—children who, while conscious of and self-conscious about their parents' old-world habits, vigorously reject them in favor of American lifestyles and partners. Lahiri, who was raised and educated in the United States and whose parents are Bengali, is adept at showing us these cultural and generational conflicts. The stories she generates from these clashes appear true to life, and while a few lack nuance and at times feel familiar, they are never predictable. Lahiri is far too accomplished and empathic a writer to relax her gaze; she excels at uncovering character and choosing detail.

Jeana's Suggestions

2009-12-08T17:33:00.005-07:00

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
409 pages

Sydney Carton, a bright young man who has seemingly wasted his life, acts behind the scenes to effect a higher justice within the maelstrom of power struggles and spy intrigues between France and England, and persecutions by the government and the governed in France. He loves a young French woman named Lucie Manette, who marries his good friend Charles Darnay, a teacher of languages with a secret aristocratic background. Set against the fiery backdrop of the French Revolution, _A Tale_ seems quite different from Dickens's other famous novels, but has little to do with politics -- it is, in fact, antipolitical. It's more a story of personal loyalty, friendship, and communion, even in turbulent times. -David Loftus, Resident Scholar from AllReaders.com

Whistling in the Dark
by Lesley Kagen
336 pages

Synopsis: Sally O'Malley made a promise to her daddy before he died. She swore she'd look after her sister, Troo. Keep her safe. But like her Granny always said-actions speak louder than words. Now, during the summer of 1959, the girls' mother is hospitalized, their stepfather has abandoned them for a six pack, and their big sister, Nell, is too busy making out with her boyfriend to notice that Sally and Troo are on the Loose. And so is a murderer and molester.

Highly imaginative Sally is pretty sure of two things. Who the killer is. And that she's next on his list. Now she has no choice but to protect herself and Troo as best she can, relying on her own courage and the kindness of her neighbors.

Review: The loss of innocence can be as dramatic as the loss of a parent or the discovery that what's perceived to be truth can actually be a big fat lie, as shown in Kagen's compassionate debut, a coming-of-age thriller set in Milwaukee during the summer of 1959... Kagen sharply depicts the vulnerability of children of any era. Sally, "a girl who wouldn't break a promise even if her life depended on it," makes an enchanting protagonist. —Publishers Weekly

The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
464 pages

Synopsis: Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town...

Publishers Weekly Starred review: What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing "about what disturbs you." The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies--and mistrusts--enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who's raised 17 children, and Aibileen's best friend Minny, who's found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.

Rosalie's Suggestions

2009-12-08T17:22:00.007-07:00

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
by Immaculee Ilibagiza
219 pages

Synopsis: Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyne whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss. This is Immaculee’s first book.

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
by Jeannette Walls
288 pages

Synopsis: Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle was "nothing short of spectacular" (Entertainment Weekly). Now, in Half Broke Horses, she brings us the story of her grandmother, told in a first-person voice that is authentic, irresistible, and triumphant.

"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
by Alan Bradley
384 pages

Synopsis: In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950—and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

To Flavia the investigation is the stuff of science: full of possibilities, contradictions, and connections. Soon her father, a man raising his three daughters alone, is seized, accused of murder. And in a police cell, during a violent thunderstorm, Colonel de Luce tells his daughter an astounding story—of a schoolboy friendship turned ugly, of a priceless object that vanished in a bizarre and brazen act of thievery, of a Latin teacher who flung himself to his death from the school’s tower thirty years before. Now Flavia is armed with more than enough knowledge to tie two distant deaths together, to examine new suspects, and begin a search that will lead her all the way to the King of England himself. Of this much the girl is sure: her father is innocent of murder—but protecting her and her sistersfrom something even worse….

An enthralling mystery, a piercing depiction of class and society, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a masterfully told tale of deceptions—and a rich literary delight.

Guernsey and Us

2009-11-20T09:23:00.003-07:00

from page 51:

Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another. Other Islanders asked to join us, and our evenings together became bright, lively times--we could almost forget, now and then, the darkness outside. We still meet every fortnight.

I couldn't help but see the similarities. When I stop to think that 12 years ago you were all strangers to me, I'm really grateful that Jeana invited me to join.

Three Cups of Tea/If you missed this...

2009-10-30T08:21:00.004-06:00

See my blog to get info on when and where to see and listening

to Greg Mortenson's BYU forum talk.

It was very intersting. http://leftyfifty.blogspot.com

Greg Mortensen

2009-10-26T11:24:00.001-06:00

Here is info for tommorrow's BYU forum

Three Men In a Boat

2009-10-22T12:52:00.002-06:00

Just curious about how bookgroup went last week. How did the discussion go? Did everyone enjoy the book? Anyone could answer these questions, because enquiring minds just have to know!
I hate it when I can't come!!
Our schedule at the MTC has changed a little so we will have to be involved there every other Thursday night or if we get new missionaries once in a while we could be there every Thursday night... It makes me very sad about my bookgroup attendance. Such is life I guess..
Hope everyone is doing well!
Love
kim

An Announcement

2009-09-10T14:55:00.000-06:00

See here.

I've Lost It!

2009-06-30T17:38:00.001-06:00

It's so funny that I'm the one who posted the initial FYI for the movie and then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Awesome.

I think I'm definitely on track for several years of senility. Sigh.

Movie time

2009-06-28T20:40:00.001-06:00

No one has posted the time for the movie and I had forgotten that I have to defend my thesis on Monday at 3:00, so it looks like I will not be going with you tomorrow. Sorry! If you reschedule for some reason, let me know!

I am plodding through Edgar. There are a lot of details I scratch my head over like why do we need to know who built the house? Will this be important later on?

Thanks Tiffianie; thanks Heather

2009-06-20T10:20:00.003-06:00

Thanks, Tiffanie, for getting me signed on so I can actually make comments on the blog! I may yet make it into the 21st century.

Heather--loved your home, especially the walk-in pantry. (Next time I'll tale the tour to the library.)

I'm halfway through Edgar Sawtelle. It's a long read.

Rosalie

Movie Time

2009-06-18T23:34:00.002-06:00

For those who can join us...

We are going to try and make it to "My Sister's Keeper" at Jordan Commons (in Sandy) on Monday June 29th. We don't have movie times yet, but we'll shoot for a matinee around noon.

Carpooling to Heather's house

2009-06-16T00:04:00.003-06:00

Last year when we carpooled to Heather's we met at the Park and Ride lot at the 1600 North freeway entrance in Orem (near Home Depot). Should we just plan on meeting there again on Thursday? If we leave at 6:20 we should get to Heather's at about 7:00.

If you want to carpool, just leave a comment so we don't leave anyone behind. I'm liking the book and looking forward to treats at Heather's house. See everyone in a couple days.

June Book Group

2009-06-14T09:29:00.002-06:00

Wherever we decide to go, let's set up a carpool. There's a possibility I won't be able to come--my daughter is having surgery on Tuesday.

Thanks to you all for being such a great group. I always enjoy spending time with you.

Charlotte

Laughter

2009-05-21T22:50:00.003-06:00

For those of you who made it to Charlotte's house for book group...I have two things to say:

1. Pirates

2. Tomato Paste

Thanks for the laughs, ladies. We really do have the best book group EVER! (Oh...and the book was great, too.)

What a Woman!

2009-05-07T16:13:00.000-06:00

I have to say that I am enjoying the book, Infidel.
Ayaan is so smart...I want to hear her speak and shake her hand!

The Queen's Fool

2009-04-23T00:36:00.001-06:00

We will be meeting Thursday (April 23rd) at Rosalie's house to discuss "The Queen's Fool". Be there or be square. Oh...yeah, I'll be the square one. Sorry.

Collette is Graduating ... at last:)

2009-04-15T16:32:00.003-06:00

Hello my book club friends. I gave all of your addresses to my daughter Shauna who sent out invitations to my graduation and graduation party. But, just to be safe, I decided to announce it here again. You are all invited to my convocation at 11:00 a.m. at the Marriott Center on Friday, April 24th. Additionally, my sister and children are having a dinner party for me that evening at 6:00 p.m. at the LDS church across from Krispy Kreme at about 1200 S and 400 W in Orem. Please let me know if you have any questions. I am thrilled about getting back to more regular attendance at book group; exercise; family dinners etc...:) I love all of you and appreciate the support of such a dynamic group of ladies.

This week's discussion

2009-04-12T21:19:00.001-06:00

No conversation about this book. I am enjoying the story, but not loving it. I wonder how much is historically correct? Rosalie?

Ireland Tomorrow

2009-03-18T23:21:00.002-06:00

Don't forget:

Ireland at Amy's Thursday night 7:30pm.

Come hungry.

A Little History of the History of LOve...

2009-02-28T15:08:00.005-07:00

Here we are..

last Thursday at Jeana's,

dissecting the confusing relationships triangle...or maze of

"The History of Love.

Thumbs up or Thumbs down?

Who's game for a second read on this one?

Ireland

2009-02-26T09:33:00.009-07:00

March's book is Ireland by Frank Delaney. It's a fairly long book, so start reading! We will be meeting at my house in three short weeks.

The first story told by the storyteller in the book is about the Architect of Newgrange. I've been doing some research on the passage tomb and came across some amazing pictures. Click here. (There is a large gallery of images at the bottom of the page.)

I may post some other information about the book as I come across it.

Enjoy!

The History of Love

2009-02-16T10:21:00.001-07:00

I really had to push myself to get through this book! I know it just shows how dumb I really am..but I just kept getting so confused! I did finish it but I can't really say that I understand everything that happened!
kim

It took a while, but...

2009-02-15T21:27:00.002-07:00

I ended up liking The History of Love. If you're not very far into it yet... keep going! It took over 100 pages for me to start liking it, but after that I really did. So many similarities with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which I liked much more, but got worse reviews). I remember being curious about History after I read Extremely Loud and figured out that they were married.

A couple articles that I read after finishing the book:

2009-02-04T17:16:00.001-07:00

Jeana,
That is just fine with me. Have fun with your missionary!
kim

Reschedule?

2009-02-03T20:58:00.001-07:00

I am welcoming home my missionary from Netherlands on our book group date. Could we reschedule for the next week?

Gee, Thanks

2009-01-15T23:25:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Kim's request for future wishes fulfilled I found myself spending an obscene amount of time in front of the mirror looking for unwanted hair.

Good grief!

Tiffanie

2009-01-13T22:27:00.003-07:00

Tiff, Sorry I haven't been on the blog lately...but just wanted to say that you are the bomb!!! For so many reasons, this particular moment I just noticed the oh so cute pictures from our Christmas get-together that you posted...Thanks!
kim

Book Group for January

2009-01-13T22:24:00.002-07:00

Hey Ladies!!

Just a reminder about our book group meeting this month.
January 15th
7:30pm
at Kim's house (362 East 1250 North, Orem)
Hope you will all be there!

Love,
Kim

Using Some Fun New Words

2009-01-12T19:25:00.003-07:00

The way we picked our books this year was simply genius. I was in Barnes & Noble and couldn't remember the January book so I called Shelley who says, "We're reading 'Sarah's Quilt' because it's January and a quilt is warm." How could I forget that? It was brilliant. For all of you readers, are you toasty yet? Do you feel like you have to read with a glass of cold water in your hand? Have you developed an aversion to beef jerky? Have you wished you could visit Jack's grave? It was good to spend so much time with someone who felt the same way about Jack as I do. I actually read it during our last super chilly string of snowstorms and every time I put it down, I was grateful to see the snow and to feel the cool air. I reckon that's a mighty fine miracle for me.

Sarah's Quilt

2009-01-05T08:30:00.002-07:00

OK.. OK..I just had to stop and blog this..I just felt really guilty running my kitchen sink water right now. I am on the fourth chapter and I'm feeling a little thirsty! Will I ever stop feeling this way?

2009 BOOK SELECTIONS

2009-01-01T08:00:00.003-07:00

1/15 Sarah's Quilt by Nancy Turner - Kim
2/19 The History of Love by Nicole Krauss - Jeana
3/19 Ireland by Frank Delaney - Amy
4/23 The Queen's Fool by Phillipa Gregory - Rosalie
5/21 Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Charlotte
6/18 Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton - Heather
7/16 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski - Shelley
8/20 The Known World by Edward Jones - Tiffanie
9/17 The Jew Store by Stella Suberman - Joanne
10/8 Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - Heather
11/19 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows - Melanie

Merry Christmas everyone!

2008-12-20T15:36:00.009-07:00

Thanks for hosting Kim!

Our Christmas Get-Together

2008-12-18T06:10:00.002-07:00

Well girls, the day is almost upon us....hope you are all as unprepared for Christmas as I am, because for some unknown reason misery loves company!
Anyway....remember to take a break from the madness and come to my house on Saturday at 11am.
We will choose books for the coming year, eat ourselves silly, laugh, talk, and exchange gifts of books!
Can't wait to see y'all..

hugs and kisses,
kim

Fought Over Any Good Books Lately?

2008-12-09T19:03:00.004-07:00

This is from the New York Times. I thought it would be appropriate to publish it here:

By JOANNE KAUFMAN
Published: December 5, 2008

JOCELYN BOWIE was thrilled by the invitation to join a book group. She had just returned to her hometown, Bloomington, Ind., to take an administration job at Indiana University, and thought she had won a ticket to a top echelon. “I was hoping to network with all these women in upper-level jobs at I.U., then I found they were in the book group,” she said. “I thought, ‘Great! They’ll see how wonderful I am, and we’ll have these great conversations about books.’ ”

Ms. Bowie cannot pinpoint the precise moment when disillusion replaced delight. Maybe it was the evening she tried to persuade everyone to look beyond Oprah Winfrey’s picks, “and they all said ‘What’s wrong with Oprah?’ ” she said.

Or perhaps it was the meeting when she lobbied for literary classics like “Emma” and the rest of the group was abuzz about “The Secret Life of Bees,” a pop-lit best seller.

The last straw came when the group picked “The Da Vinci Code” and someone suggested the discussion would be enriched by delving into the author’s source material. “It was bad enough that they wanted to read ‘Da Vinci Code’ in the first place,” Ms. Bowie said, “but then they wanted to talk about it.” She quit shortly after, making up a polite excuse: “I told the organizer, ‘You’re reading fiction, and I’m reading history right now.’ ”

Yes, it’s a nice, high-minded idea to join a book group, a way to make friends and read books that might otherwise sit untouched. But what happens when you wind up hating all the literary selections — or the other members? Breaking up isn’t so hard to do when it means freedom from inane critical commentary, political maneuvering, hurt feelings, bad chick lit and even worse chardonnay.

“Who knew a book group could be such a soap opera?” said Barb Burg, senior vice president at Bantam Dell, which publishes many titles adopted by book groups. “You’d think it would just be about the book. But wherever I go, people want to talk to me about the infighting and the politics.”

One member may push for John Updike, while everyone else is set on John Grisham. One person wants to have a glass of wine and talk about the book, while everyone else wants to get drunk and talk about their spouses. “There are all these power struggles about what book gets chosen,” Ms. Burg said. Then come the complaints: “It’s too long, it’s too short, it’s not literary enough, it’s too literary ... ”

The literary societies of the 19th century seemed content to leave the drama to authors and poets, whom they discussed with great seriousness of purpose. Some book groups evolved from sewing circles, which “gave women a chance to exercise their intellect and have a social gathering,” said Rachel W. Jacobsohn, author of “The Reading Group Handbook,” which gives a history of the format plus dos and don’ts for modern hosts.
For Doreen Orion, a psychiatrist in Boulder, Colo., the spoiler in her book group was a drama queen who turned every meeting into her own personal therapy session. Dr. Orion was used to such people in her practice, but in her personal life — well, no thanks. “There were always things going on in her life with relationships, and she’d want to talk about it,” she said. “There’d be some weird thing in a book and she’d relate it to her life no matter what. Everything came back to her. It was really exhausting after a while.”

What attracted Susan Farewell to a book group called the IlluminaTea were guidelines that precluded such off-putting antics. No therapy talk, no chitchat and no skipping meetings. “It was very high-minded,” said Ms. Farewell, a travel writer in Westport, Conn. Members took turns selecting books, “and you felt that your choice was a measure of how intelligent and sophisticated and worldly you were,” she said.

The high standards extended to the refreshment table. “When it was your month to host a meeting, you would do your interpretation of a tea, and the teas got very competitive,” Ms. Farewell said. Homemade scones and Devonshire cream were par for the course, and Ms. Farewell recalls spending the day before her hostess stint making watercress and smoked salmon sandwiches.

This started to feel oppressive. “If the standards had been more relaxed, I would have stayed in the group,” she said. “But I just felt I couldn’t keep getting clotted cream. I couldn’t work and carry on the formality and get through the novel every month, so I just said I couldn’t make the meetings anymore.”

Some who leave one group find happiness in another. Dr. Orion and another woman broke from their original group and contacted another woman who had also left. “Then we secretly reconstituted as another group,” Dr. Orion said. “We’ve been going strong for 10 years, but our experience has made us cautious about inviting new members. We’ve become very selective.”

Nancy Atkins Peck, an artist and historian in Glen Rock, N.J., has also made a successful transition. Until the election cycle of 2004, she had loved her book group — the members read “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” novels by Virginia Woolf “and sometimes a paperback of no importance,” she said.

Then, after a presidential debate, an argument about the candidates ensued, “so it was decided that we couldn’t read any political books or have any political discussions anymore,” recalled Ms. Peck, who had just suggested the group read a book about the Bush White House.

“It was nixed, and I just felt that was unnatural,” given that the group had successfully discussed other sensitive issues, she said. She and her husband then joined a coed group, which has worked out well. “And we read a heck of a lot of political books,” she said triumphantly.

Sometimes the problem is a life-stage mismatch among group members. “I know of a group where all but one member has young children,” said Susanne Pari, author of the novel “The Fortune Catcher” and the program director at Book Group Expo. “They talk for 15 minutes about the book and then launch into a discussion of poopy diapers and nap times and preschool.”

Then the one member who had nothing to bring to the soiled Pampers conversation announced she did not have time for the group. For etiquette reasons, “it’s very uncommon” for people to give the real reason for their disenchantment, Ms. Pari said.

Ms. Bushell, the book-group facilitator, tells of one woman who left a group “because she didn’t envision herself sitting around talking about a book — she thought some business networking would take place.”

Another woman decamped because she wanted to read more chick lit. “I hate to sound ponderous,” Ms. Bushell said, “but I have a certain moral obligation. I don’t feel I can be paid for leading a discussion about ‘The Devil Wears Prada.’”

At Book Passage, a store with two branches in the San Francisco area, Kate Larson is something of a Miss Lonely Hearts for newcomers and disgruntled book group members. “I collect names, and when I get 12 or 14 I ask them to come to a meeting at the store,” she said. “If it looks like they all agree about what kinds of things they want to read, they’ve got a book club.”

Ms. Larson uses a newsletter to help people find special-interest groups — say, in science fiction or spirituality. Groups made up of total strangers seem to last longer, she said, “because the focus is truly on the book.”

As for Ms. Bowie of Indiana University, she was asked to join another group but has chosen to stay unaffiliated. “My experience was a real disappointment,” she said. “Now when I look at a novel in a store and it has book group questions in the back, it almost puts me off from buying it.”

Today there are perhaps four million to five million book groups in the United States, and the number is thought to be rising, said Ann Kent, the founder of Book Group Expo, an annual gathering of readers and authors.

“I firmly believe there was an uptick in the number of book groups after 9/11, and I’m expecting another increase in these difficult economic times,” she said. “We’re looking to stay connected and to have a form of entertainment that’s affordable, and book groups are an easy avenue for that.”

Most groups are all-female, but there are plenty of all-male and coed ones. Lately there have emerged plenty of online-only book groups too, though — given the difficulty of flinging a drink in the face of a member who suggests reading Trollope — those are clearly a different animal.

And more clubs means more acrimony. Sometimes there is a rambler in the group, whose opinion far outlasts the natural interest of others, or a pedant, who never met a literary reference she did not yearn to sling. The most common cause of dissatisfaction and departures?

“It’s because there’s an ayatollah,” said Esther Bushell, a professional book-group facilitator who leads a dozen suburban New York groups and charges $250 to $300 a member annually for her services. “This person expects to choose all the books and to take over all the discussions. And when I come on board, the ayatollah is threatened and doesn’t say anything.” Like other facilitators, she is hired for the express purpose of bringing long-winded types in line.

Still Lurking

2008-12-05T17:37:00.005-07:00

I finally got logged on here after several tries when the site was not letting me on. I tried not to take it personally, but ya'll know how I am!

I haven't posted any suggestions since there are so many already listed that I want to read. I will be glad to choose one of yours, although you might want to read one that I'm trying to finish up this weekend. It's called White Noise and it won the National Book Award in 1985 and was one of Time Magazine's top 100 books from 1923 - 2005. It is very quirky and maybe some of you wouldn't like that, but I think it is so funny!

Amy's Suggestions

2008-12-01T12:49:00.012-07:00

Ireland by Frank Delaney

From a land famous for storytelling comes an epic novel of Ireland that captures the intimate, passionate texture of the Irish spirit.

One evening in 1951, an itinerant storyteller arrives unannounced at a house in the Irish countryside. In exchange for a bed and a warm meal, he invites his hosts and their neighbors to join him by the wintry fireside, and begins to tell formative stories of Ireland's history. Ronan, a nine-year-old boy, grows so entranced by the storytelling that, when the old man leaves abruptly under mysterious circumstances, the boy devotes himself to finding him again.

Ronan's search for the Storyteller becomes both a journey of self-discovery, long unspoken family secrets, and an immersion into the sometimes conflicting histories of his native land.

Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

Juggling the demands of her yarn shop and single-handedly raising a teenage daughter has made Georgia Walker grateful for her Friday Night Knitting Club. Her friends are happy to escape their lives too, even for a few hours. But when Georgia's ex suddenly reappears, demanding a role in their daughter's life, her whole world is shattered.

Luckily, Georgia's friends are there, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they've created isn't just a knitting club: it's a sisterhood.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea works in her father's antiquarian bookshop where her fascination for the biographies of the long-dead has led her to write them herself. She gets a letter from one of the most famous authors of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, whose popularity as a writer has been in no way diminished by her reclusiveness. Until now, Vida has toyed with journalists who interview her, creating outlandish life histories for herself - all of the invention. Now she is old and ailing, and at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to Margaret is a summons.

Somewhat anxiously, the equally reclusive Margaret travels to Yorshire to meet her subject - and Vida starts to recount her tale. It is one of gothic strangeness featuring the March family; the fascinating, devious and willful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret is captivated by the power of Vida's storytelling. But as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction, and she doesn't entirely trust Vida's account. She goes to check up on the family, visiting their old home and piecing together their story in her own way. What she discovers on her journey to the truth is for Margaret a chilling and transforming experience.

Just Because I Can

2008-11-29T20:57:00.004-07:00

Are you sure you wanted to make "authorship" available to all of us? I only ask because I could sit here on my computer and ramble about nothing for a very long time and make you all wish that I would s***up and leave you alone. (You're welcome, Kim.)

By the way, what's up with Black Friday? Seriously people. I mean, I like a good deal just as much as the next girl...but why on earth do people feel the necessity to wake up at ridiculous hours of the night and trample innocent people in order to save a couple dollars? Sheesh!

I also made a really great Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. I just thought you should know.

Oh, and I have a headache.

And d'ya know what else I don't get. Those lame car window stickers with Calvin peeing on various assorted objects. I repeat: Lame.

Have a fabulous weekend, ladies. I'm excited for our party. I have a great book already wrapped. Yippee!

Food Assignments for December 20th

2008-11-25T08:21:00.002-07:00

So girls..,this is the way things are headed for our December meeting..
We are meeting on December 20th from 11am-1pm at Kim's house.
The following assignments were decided upon at our November meeting:
Rosalie will bring fruit
JoAnne will bring something that is fermented...!
Heather will bring juice
Melanie will bring bacon
Tiffanie will bring a breakfast pizza
Kim will bring egg souffle
Collette will bring something really yummy (she told me about it and I can't remember any specifics)...old age is sinking in fast!
Jeana will bring hot chocolate and yogurt

When the ones who weren't there decide what they would like to bring...(Shelley, Amy, Charlotte, Vickie...(not to be mentioning names) let me know...or just surprise us!
Can't wait to see you all on the 20th.

Love and hugs,
kim

Joanne's Suggestions

2008-11-20T21:09:00.004-07:00

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her ability to tap into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she explores what happens when a young woman's past -- a past she didn't even know she had -- catches up to her just in time to threaten her future.

Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiancé, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And then a policeman knocks on her door, revealing a secret that changes the world as she knows it.

In shock and confusion, Delia must sift through the truth -- even when it jeopardizes her life and the lives of those she loves. What happens when you learn you are not who you thought you were? When the people you've loved and trusted suddenly change before your eyes? When getting your deepest wish means giving up what you've always taken for granted? Vanishing Acts explores how life -- as we know it -- might not turn out the way we imagined; how doing the right thing could mean doing the wrong thing; how the memory we thought had vanished could return as a threat. Once again, Jodi Picoult handles a difficult and timely topic with understanding, insight, and compassion. (448 pages)

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." —Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"—wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come. (224 pages)

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz

Katz, a gardener, cook, and writer, is also a long-term HIV/AIDS survivor who strongly believes that the live-culture ferments in foods have kept him alive and healthy. In this unusual book, he makes a case for the benefits of fermentation, an ancient preservation technique that he says makes foods much more digestible and nutritious and that is lacking in the Western diet. Among other weighty topics, he explores worldwide traditions of fermented foods, the history of human nutrition, and fermentation as part of the cycle of life; many chapters explain the science and techniques of vegetable, bean, dairy, and bread fermentation, with more than 90 recipes (e.g., sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, yogurt, breads, wines and vinegar, and beers) included. Katz has obviously done comprehensive research on his subject and is passionate about it (although he tells readers much more than they want to know about his digestive process). While foodies who enjoy the sensual pleasures of the table will find Katz's attitude completely contrary to theirs, this specialized guide will appeal to those facing similar health challenges. (187 pages)

Shelley's Suggestions

2008-11-17T18:29:00.003-07:00

The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Burrows
(See summary below.)

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes—the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain—create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic. (576 pages)

The Queen's Fool by Phillipa Gregory

A young woman caught in the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, must find her true destiny amid treason, poisonous rivalries, loss of faith, and unrequited love.

It is winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, is forced to flee Spain with her father. But Hannah is no ordinary refugee. Her gift of "Sight," the ability to foresee the future, is priceless in the troubled times

of the Tudor court. Hannah is adopted by the glamorous Robert Dudley, the charismatic son of King Edward's protector, who brings her to court as a "holy fool" for Queen Mary and, ultimately, Queen Elizabeth. Hired as a fool but working as a spy; promised in wedlock but in love with her master; endangered by the laws against heresy, treason, and witchcraft, Hannah must choose between the safe life of a commoner and the dangerous intrigues of the royal family that are inextricably bound up in her own yearnings and desires.

Teeming with vibrant period detail and peopled by characters seamlessly woven into the sweeping tapestry of history, The Queen's Fool is another rich and emotionally resonant gem from this wonderful storyteller. (512 pages)

Kim's suggestions

2008-11-17T14:04:00.012-07:00

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Leo Gursky is just about surviving, tapping his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But life wasn't always like this: sixty years ago, in the Polish village where he was born, Leo fell in love and wrote a book. And though Leo doesn't know it, that book survived, inspiring fabulous circumstances, even love. Fourteen-year-old Alma was named after a character in that very book. And although she has her hands full—keeping track of her brother, Bird (who thinks he might be the Messiah), and taking copious notes on How to Survive in the Wild—she undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With consummate, spellbinding skill, Nicole Krauss gradually draws together their stories.  This extraordinary book was inspired by the author's four grandparents and by a pantheon of authors whose work is haunted by loss—Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, and more. It is truly a history of love: a tale brimming with laughter, irony, passion, and soaring imaginative power. (272 pages)

The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

Life changes in an instant. On a foggy beach. In the seconds when Abby Mason—photographer, fiancée soon-to-be-stepmother—looks into her camera and commits her greatest error. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, here is the riveting tale of a family torn apart, of the search for the truth behind a child’s disappearance, and of one woman’s unwavering faith in the redemptive power of love—all made startlingly fresh through Michelle Richmond’s incandescent sensitivity and extraordinary insight.  Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco fog. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger’s van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches for clues about what happened that morning—and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.  Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma’s father finds solace in religion and scientific probability—but Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the past and the little girl she lost. With her life at a crossroads, she will leave San Francisco for a country thousands of miles away. And there, by the side of another sea, on a journey that has led her to another man and into a strange subculture of wanderers and surfers, Abby will make the most astounding discovery of all—as the truth of Emma’s disappearance unravels with stunning force. (480 pages)

Sarah’s Quilt by Nancy E. Turner

These Is My Words, Sarah Agnes Prine told the spellbinding story of an extraordinary pioneer woman and her struggle to make a home in the Arizona Territories. Now, in this mesmerizing sequel, a three-year drought has made Sarah desperate for water. And just when it seems that life couldn't get worse, she learns that her brother and his family are trapped in the Great San Francisco Earthquake. A heartwarming blend of stubbornness and compassion, Sarah Agnes Prine will once again capture the hearts of readers everywhere. (432 pages)

Tiffanie's Suggestions

2008-11-15T19:31:00.016-07:00

Widow’s War by Sally Gunning

Married for twenty years to Edward Berry, Lyddie is used to the trials of being a whaler's wife in the Cape Cod village of Satucket, Massachusetts—running their house herself during her husband's long absences at sea, living with the daily uncertainty that Edward will simply not return. And when her worst fear is realized, she finds herself doubly cursed. She is overwhelmed by grief, and her property and rights are now legally in the hands of her nearest male relative: her daughter's overbearing husband, whom Lyddie cannot abide. Lyddie decides to challenge both law and custom for control of her destiny, but she soon discovers the price of her bold "war" for personal freedom to be heartbreakingly dear. (336 pages)

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slaveowner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel. Impossible to rush through, The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day. (432 pages)

The Jew Store by Stella Suberman (memoir)

The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in the small town of Concordia, Tennessee-a town consisting of one main street, one bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware store, one beauty parlor, one barber shop, one blacksmith, and many Christian churches. That didn't stop Aaron Bronson, a Russian immigrant, from moving his young family out of New York by horse and wagon and journeying to this remote corner of the South to open a small dry goods store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store.

Never mind that he was greeted with "Danged if I ever heard tell of a Jew storekeeper afore." Never mind that all the townspeople were suspicious of any strangers. Never mind that the Klan actively discouraged the presence of outsiders. Aaron Bronson bravely established a business and proved in the process that his family could make a home, and a life, anywhere. With great fondness and a fine dry wit, Stella Suberman tells the story of her family in an account that Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, described as "a gem...Vividly told and captivating in its humanity."

Now available for the first time in paperback, here is the book that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said was "forthright. . . . not a revisionist history of Jewish life in the small-town South but . . . written within the context of the 1920s, making it valuable history as well as a moving family story." (320 pages)

Heather's Suggestions

2008-11-14T22:48:00.009-07:00

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Jerome's comic masterpiece — and one of the best-known classics of English humor — follows the misadventures of 3 bungling, Victorian-era bachelors who take off on a rowing excursion up the Thames. Their disastrous struggles with camping equipment, meal preparation, and rampant hypochondria trumpet simple truths that still resonate today. (144 pages)

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Simon Vance has just the right plummy accent for an Indian merchant in post-colonial Africa. He has purchased a shop at a bend in the great river. He sells pencils, copy books, razor blades, and iron pots for people who live in the jungle. A friend has got the Big Burger franchise. "But the airplane is a wonderful thing," his brother tells him. "You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The airplane is faster than the heart." The jungle reasserts itself. Civilization withdraws. They are going to kill everybody who can read and write. Vance delivers the detached ferocity that won Naipaul the Nobel Prize. (288 pages)

Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton

She has as much business keeping a stray dog as she would walking across Egypt–which not so incidentally is the title of her favorite hymn. She’s Mattie Rigsbee, an independent, strong-minded senior citizen who, at seventy-eight, might be slowing down just a bit. When teenage delinquent Wesley Benfield drops in on her life, he is even less likely a companion than the stray dog. But, of course, the dog never tasted her mouth-watering pound cake. Wise and witty, down-home and real, Walking Across Egypt is a book for everyone. (240 pages)

Charlotte's Suggestions

2008-11-13T21:32:00.010-07:00

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery--personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier. But his research reveals even more about his own life than he's willing to admit. What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

Like other great quests in literature, Lyman Ward's investigation leads him deep into the dark shadows of his own life. The result is a deeply moving novel that, through the prism of one family, illuminates the American present against the fascinating background of its past. (592 pages)

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission.

Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced.

Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant. (368 pages)

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

David Sedaris became a star autobiographer on public radio, onstage in New York, and on bestseller lists, mostly on the strength of "SantaLand Diaries," a scathing, hilarious account of his stint as a Christmas elf at Macy's. (It's in two separate collections, both worth owning, Barrel Fever and the Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice.) Sedaris's caustic gift has not deserted him in his fourth book, which mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France. Though his anarchic inclination to digress is his glory, Sedaris does have a theme in these reminiscences: the inability of humans to communicate. The title is his rendition in transliterated English of how he and his fellow students of French in Paris mangle the Gallic language. In the essay "Jesus Shaves," he and his classmates from many nations try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim. "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber," says another. Sedaris muses on the disputes between his Protestant mother and his father, a Greek Orthodox guy whose Easter fell on a different day. Other essays explicate his deep kinship with his eccentric mom and absurd alienation from his IBM-exec dad: "To me, the greatest mystery of science continues to be that a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests."

Every glimpse we get of Sedaris's family and acquaintances delivers laughs and insights. He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist ("for whom the word pen had two syllables") by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn't share his obsession with breasts, and sings "Light My Fire" all wrong--"as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match." As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign "guessays" on what would happen in the next day's episode. (288 pages)

Melanie's Suggestions

2008-11-13T21:20:00.007-07:00

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate—and not-so-articulate—neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life—as will readers. (288 pages)

The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich

Starred Review. Erdrich's 13th novel, a multigenerational tour de force of sin, redemption, murder and vengeance, finds its roots in the 1911 slaughter of a farming family near Pluto, N.Dak. The family's infant daughter is spared, and a posse forms, incorrectly blames three Indians and lynches them. One, Mooshum Milk, miraculously survives. Over the next century, descendants of both the hanged men and the lynch mob develop relationships that become deeply entangled, and their disparate stories are held together via principal narrator Evelina, Mooshum Milk's granddaughter, who comes of age on an Indian reservation near Pluto in the 1960s and '70s and forms two fateful adolescent crushes: one on bad-boy schoolmate Corwin Peace and one on a nun. Though Evelina doesn't know it, both are descendants of lynch mob members. The plot splinters as Evelina enrolls in college and finds work at a mental asylum; Corwin spirals into a life of crime; and a long-lost violin (its backstory is another beautiful piece of the mosaic) takes on massive significance. Erdrich plays individual narratives off one another, dropping apparently insignificant clues that build to head-slapping revelations as fates intertwine and the person responsible for the 1911 killing is identified. This book got a 5 star rating from quite a few Critics. (320 pages)

Rosalie's Suggestions

2008-11-13T21:12:00.007-07:00

The Host by Stephanie Myers

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.

Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts with visions of the man Melanie loves-Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

Featuring what may be the first love triangle involving only two bodies, The Host is a riveting and unforgettable novel that will bring a vast new readership to one of the most compelling writers of our time. (624 pages)

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

The No.1 Ladies´ Detective Agency, located in Gaborone, Botswana, consists of one woman, the engaging Precious Ramotswe. A cross between Kinsey Millhone and Miss Marple, this unlikely heroine specializes in missing husbands, wayward daughters, con men and imposters. When she sets out on the trail of a missing child she is tumbled headlong into some strange situations and not a little danger. Deftly interweaving tragedy and humor to create a memorable tale of human desires and foibles, the book is also an evocative portrait of a distant world. (240 pages)